


Reawakening

by stridingacrossparallels



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Episode Rewrite: s04e17-18 The End of Time, Episode: s04e17-e18 The End of Time, F/M, Identity Issues, Post-Episode: s04e16 Waters of Mars, Pre-Episode: s04e17-e18 The End of Time, Regeneration, Reunions, Romance, Secret Identity, Time Lord Victorious, TimeLady!Rose
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2015-01-27
Packaged: 2018-01-05 11:13:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 35,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1093223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stridingacrossparallels/pseuds/stridingacrossparallels
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A year after Bad Wolf Bay, Rose Tyler regenerates in Pete’s World. Now armed with the abilities of a Time Lady, she makes her way back to her home universe, but chooses to hide her true identity from the Doctor when he takes her on as his new companion.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue: Revived

**Author's Note:**

> Timeline/Canon Compliance: This fic starts deviating from canon as of the end of Forest of the Dead. For the purposes of this fic you can consider all of the appearances of Rose Tyler in S4 to have not occurred. This means that she makes none of the glimpsed appearances earlier in the series and that the events of Turn Left through Journey’s End do not occur. You may consider Midnight and the first three of the post-JE specials to have occurred as written, but to have been scattered over the course of three years. In the Doctor’s timeline, this story begins a couple of weeks after the events of The Waters of Mars. 
> 
> Disclaimer: Anything you recognize isn’t mine. If I owned Doctor Who I wouldn’t be worrying myself sick trying to make sure I’m gainfully employed by the time I graduate from college in May.

Rose Tyler had woken up in a lot of odd places in her life, but the morgue was definitely a new one.

She sat up from the hard metal table. Inspecting her body, she did not seem to be injured. It must have been poison or illness that put her here then. She examined her memories and winced. She had an oddly vivid recollection of being cornered by a rogue Krillitane. She recalled great pain as it laid into her with its claws, the bitter taste of blood filling her mouth, and her fear as she slowly lost consciousness in that lonely alley. 

Okay, in that context, the lack of injury was definitely weird.

She saw her clothes in a plastic bag on the side table and went to put them on. They were bloody and ripped, and oddly baggy around the hips. Looking down, the trousers appeared to be too short. This was another oddity that she didn’t have time to contemplate.

Taking the elevator the ground floor, she found herself in the Torchwood lobby and sensed it was around midnight. She found her car and drove to her parents’ mansion, hoping they could shed some light on what had happened.

When Jackie opened the door, Rose smiled.

“Hello, Mum.”

That was odd. Her voice sounded all funny. She cleared her throat.

“Who the hell are you?”

“It’s me, Mum. It’s Rose. I’m not dead.”

There it was again, that strange low voice. Perhaps her throat was a bit dehydrated?

“I dunno what you think you’re playing at, missy, but my Rose died two days ago, and you are definitely not her. Don’t you think I know what my own daughter looks like?”

“It’s me, Mum. Why don’t you recognize me?” Her voice caught.

“Are you trying to steal her identity? Is that what you’re doing?” Jackie shook her finger at her. “Well, it isn’t going to work, is it? No one takes advantage of my daughter’s memory!”

Rose felt the sting of her mother’s hand landing across her cheek.

Suddenly, she heard footsteps behind her mum, and a second later her stepfather appeared, rubbing his eyes and sighing heavily.

“What’s the problem here, Jacks?”

“This woman is trying to steal Rose’s identity!” 

“Mum!” Rose took Jackie’s hand. “You and I were born in a different universe. My real dad died when I was a baby, and we lived in the Powell Estate. You are obsessed with _EastEnders_ and were gutted when you discovered that _Strictly Come Dancing_ went off the air after one series in this universe…Um….” She trailed off a moment, trying to think of a detail only she would know about her mum, who still looked incredulous.

“Oh! And you confided in me just last week that you bribe the cook to let you make the tea because you don’t think she does it right.” 

There was a moment of stunned silence.

“Rose?” Jackie’s eyes went wide, and she lifted her hand to cover her mouth.

“It’s really me, Mum.”

Pete cleared his throat.

“If you don’t mind my asking, Rose, did you know that you could regenerate before this happened?” he asked.

“Of course I can’t regenerate! What are you talking about? I just didn’t die like you thought I did. It’s not like I’m the Doctor and can go about changing my face.” 

Pete put a steady arm around her shoulders and led her inside, leading her to stand in front of the mirror in the hallway. 

“Then again, maybe I can,” she breathed after a long speechless moment. She could comprehend no details about the face in the mirror beyond the fact that it was not at all her own. She turned around, feeling dizzy and nauseated.

“I need to sit down.”

“I think that would be best for all of us,” Pete sighed, following her into the living room.

Rose sat and leaned her head back against the sofa cushions. What did this mean? Did this make her a Time Lady now, or had she just gained regenerative powers? Did she only get this one regeneration, or did she get twelve now, like the Doctor? She focused a moment on clearing her mind of her whirling thoughts so that she could discuss this calmly with her parents.

Unfortunately, clearing her mind did not have the desired effect. Her standard technique of focusing on her own heartbeat led her to perceive the minutiae of the workings of her own body. Not only could she perceive the thumps of her heart, but also her liver producing bile, her kidneys processing waste, even her ovaries preparing to release an egg. She could differentiate the feelings of various hormones pumping through her bloodstream, though she had no names for each of them. Trying again to focus on just her heart, she discovered that she could slow it down or speed it up at will. As these things only caused her mind to spin more, she stopped focusing on her heartbeat and tried to just be. 

The effect of this was even worse. Suddenly, it was as if she could comprehend their exact position in time in space and feel the ebb and flow of time. She could feel the Earth turn beneath her feet and see her parents’ lives fold out before her, laughing and aging, with Pete surviving a heart attack only to watch Jackie die of cancer the next year. Tears pricked behind her eyes.

Her nausea intensified and her skin began to crawl. In a burst of intuition, she just knew that she didn’t belong here, in this time and place, in this universe. Time swirled around her in strange ways, causing the fabric of reality to buckle and fold. There was no natural place for her here, no alternate Rose whose space she might occupy. It was imperative that she return to the other universe immediately. A wild thought hit her, and she found herself smiling genuinely for the first time in a year.

“I think I know how to get home.”


	2. Reprised

“Rose, there’s a disturbance over by Ely Bridge that’s sending up our red flags. Want to go check it out?”

“Sure thing, Jack,” Rose replied, looking up from coding a new rift manipulation program. “Just give me a sec to finish this up.”

After typing out the last two lines of code, she grabbed her dark green leather jacket and followed Jack out to his SUV.

Rose caught Jack sneaking glances at her as they drove. She sighed.

“Just say it, Jack.”

He seemed to consider her a moment, as if debating with himself how much to press her before blurting, “I just don’t understand why, after three months back home, you still have made no attempt to contact the Doctor. He misses you like crazy, Rose. I know he does. And don’t try to tell me that you don’t still lo–”

“It’s not that simple. I’m different, Jack. I’m not the same woman I was when I travelled with him. It wouldn’t be right to try to pick up where we left off.”

“The Doctor of all people understands about regeneration, Rose.”

Rose played with the skin of her too delicate wrist. She pushed it forward, watching it move and wrinkle to her will, pinching it so that she could feel the pain, ground herself in this body. She sighed.

“I don’t know who I am anymore. How can I expect him to accept me again if I don’t even know who that is?” She could barely hear her own voice as she made this confession.

Jack studied her out the corner of his eye.

“You’re Rose Tyler,” he replied after a beat. “You’re the exact same woman I met during a London air raid. You’re fearless and forgiving and have the greatest capacity to love of anyone I’ve ever met.”

Rose swallowed and looked away. She began to play with a strand of auburn hair that had come loose from the knot at the back of her head, unable to look Jack in the eye.

“After I was…trapped….” She paused and bit her bottom lip, twisting the hair around her finger in earnest. Taking a breath, she began again, “It was a very dark time in my life, Jack. I can’t just pretend that it hasn’t had an effect on me. The absolute…” She shuddered and shook her head before continuing on. “It changed me. It would be unfair to both of us if I were to suddenly ring him and try to force upon him the presence of a woman who is completely different from the person he invited to travel with him all those years ago. And our history…it’s too much baggage. We couldn’t just start over.”

She turned to him then.

“Part of me wonders how you’ve managed to maintain your sense of self after everything you’ve been through, Jack.” She eyed him curiously.

Jack seemed to consider this a moment.

“I’ve had a lot of time to come to terms with it all, what I’ve seen, what we do. I just live in the now, Rose. It’s how I cope.”

Rose nodded and looked down. She still could not get used to her new boyish frame, with its narrower hips, and smaller chest. The too delicate features she saw in the mirror every morning unsettled her. She returned to twisting her hair, giving it a hard pull. She felt a couple strands break free at the roots.

“Well, then, maybe that’s what I’m doing. Going back to my life with the Doctor would just be living in the past, wouldn’t it?”

Jack raised his eyebrows.

“There’s a difference between living in the moment and refusing to acknowledge your past entirely, Rose.”

She opened her mouth to retort, but stopped short at the sight before her as they reached their destination.

“Bloody hell. Is that..?”

“Yep.”

“Surrounded by…?”

“Yep.”

Rose gave Jack a resigned smile.

“Here we go again.”

***

It was times like these that the Doctor really missed travelling with a companion.

For one, the Judoon would not let you be your own character witness when they arrested you. It was also much more difficult to draw attention away from the fact that you were trying to sonic yourself out of your handcuffs when a hundred and fifty members of the most respected intergalactic police force, who were selected for being the most hard-nosed of a race known for its hard-nosedness, have their steely eyes trained solely on you. And, if the Judoon had their way he would likely be imprisoned for ages and really, that was so much more fun with friends. Prolonged periods of solitude with no adventure to liven things up gave him time alone with his thoughts. And that made him rather maudlin, really. Oh, who was he kidding? Maudlin had been his natural state of being for the better part of six years.

It had been a bit better with Donna aboard. Martha had been brilliant, of course, but the wounds to his hearts had still been so fresh that most of the time her presence did little more that keep him a notch above suicidal. But by the time Donna began travelling with him he felt ready to start living again, even if it would never again be with the same zeal that he once had. And Donna was the best mate he could hope for, always up for an adventure and ready to call him out when he let the anger and grief get to him. He even told her a bit about _Her_ , and it felt good have a sympathetic ear to which he could vent some of the pain he kept bottled up inside.

But Donna had met Lee in that virtual world in The Library, and he could not let himself hold her back from having a normal life with the man she loved. Well, as normal a life a twenty-first century human could have single-handedly overhauling the bureaucracy of an alien government millions of light years and thirty centuries away from her place of birth. Donna had not wanted to leave him, but they were eventually able to come to a compromise; he would stop by their flat on a small planet in the Dagmar Cluster once a month for tea, an adventure, and a trip home to visit her mum and grandfather.

He had not even asked anyone to come with him since Donna. Two years had come and gone and he still could not bring himself to be open to that kind of loss again. Not that he had really lost Martha and Donna. He knew he was always welcome for a visit. But the universe lost a bit of her lustre when he had no one to share it with. Perhaps it was time he opened himself to the possibility of bringing someone new on board.

An angry Judoon approached. Weeeell…he said angry, but there really was not much difference between an angry Judoon and a normal Judoon, was there? Unflappable species, the Judoon. But, he had gotten under their tough hides often enough now to distinguish how they marched with a bit more purpose when he was involved.

“Mo ho sno cro dafojo,” the Judoon stated.

Oh dear. That charge meant a high security holding cell. Even he couldn’t break himself out of one of those.

“Fro grobojo, fomodo!” he replied.

The Judoon grunted and stomped its feet, pulling out an electronic device with rather large antennae extending from the top. Was that…? Oh no, it _was_. The Judoon grabbed his arm and activated the device.

It was going to be a long night.

***

She should not have been so surprised to see the TARDIS sitting in the field opposite Ely Bridge surrounded by an angry platoon of Judoon. After all, finding trouble of an alien variety was kind of the Doctor’s _thing_. And, having found employment at an organization that does the same thing, they were bound to run into each other eventually. She had just counted on having a bit more time to mentally prepare herself.

Suddenly, both the Doctor and his ship disappeared with a flash of red light.

“C’mon, let’s go save him,” Rose told Jack, reaching for her bag.

Jack raised his eyebrows.

“And how do you propose we do that? That teleport could have gone anywhere.”

Rose pulled out a sonic screwdriver and pointed it toward the location the Doctor was standing moments before.

“Only quatrifold compression teleports flash red like that, and the fun thing about quatrifold compression teleports is that they leave a quantum signature from which I can extrapolate the space-time coordinates of reappearance within a 200 yard margin of error,” Rose replied, tilting her head to side thoughtfully for a moment before grabbing Jack’s wrist computer and sonicking it.

“What are you doing?”

“Repairing your vortex manipulator so we can follow that teleport.”

Rose punched in some coordinates and pressed ENTER. They suddenly found themselves in the abandoned corridor of what appeared to be some kind of space station.

“Right,” said Jack. “Keep forgetting about the Time Lady superpowers.”

Rose rolled her eyes. “Not superpowers so much as picking up a few things whilst building a transdimensional slingshot.”

She scanned their surroundings, and put her ear to a door at the end of the hall.

“Rose…”

Rose waved her hand and shushed him, using her sonic to amplify the voices on the other side of the door.

“Okay,” she said finally, turning towards him. “They keep talking about someone who is supposedly the best guard on Chat Dif III. Probably the name of the planet we’re on, yeah? Ever heard of it?”

Jack paled visibly.

“It’s a high security prison, Rose,” he replied. “When I worked for the Time Agency we were told this was the worst possible place we could end up. Once I started travelling time and space I was under the legal jurisdiction of the Shadow Proclamation.”

“The Doctor mentioned the Shadow Proclamation a couple of times,” Rose nodded.

“That doesn’t surprise me. They’re intergalactic police. The highest legal authority in the universe. A sort of universal UN, if you will. And if you’ve broken intergalactic law…they aren’t kind, Rose. Chat Dif III is their death row. And their death sentences aren’t pretty. They argue that breaking their laws can have a terrible impact on the universe, and therefore the consequences of doing so needs to pose a significant threat to potential perpetrators. And they’re not wrong. Xenocide, crimes against time, violation of intergalactic treaties…these are things the universe needs protecting against. But things they do to their prisoners…they would be unthinkable even among the least humane of civilizations. If you’re of a species long-lived enough, they might torture you for centuries before finally killing you.”

Jack looked at Rose meaningfully.

She took this in. If the Judoon brought the Doctor here they must believe that he broke some kind of intergalactic law. And, if he was convicted of whatever they were accusing him of, he might be at their mercy for millennia before his ultimate death. She shivered. That sure as hell wouldn’t happen on her watch.

“Well, we’re going to have to rescue him then, aren’t we?” Rose had no shadow of a doubt of what her course of action would be.

Jack grabbed her hand, stopping her from setting off down the corridor.

“Rose, we’re going to want to have a plan for this one. I know that you like to use the Doctor method and just improvise, but we really cannot afford a screw this one up. I’m immortal, and I would wager the entire contents of my bank account that you have a few more regenerations left in you. We’re facing thousands of years of every kind of torture imaginable if we’re caught.”

Rose hesitated a moment and gnawed at her bottom lip. She did not like the thought of the Doctor being locked up here for any length of time. Then again, she also knew she would not be able to save him if she was imprisoned herself.

“Alright,” she conceded. “Let’s do this your way.”

***

The Doctor leaned his head back against the cool metal wall of his cell, fighting the urge to scratch where the rough material of the boiler suit they had forced him into rubbed against his skin. He found it quite ironic that the Shadow Proclamation thought that solitary confinement was the mildest form of punishment they could inflict upon him. Oh how wrong they were. He would take the physical torture and the invasions of his mind to implant psychic horror over this. Hell, even the manipulations of his time sense, which would have made any other member of a time sensitive species go mad, were preferable to the isolation. There was a reason he avoided being left alone with his conscience these days. It almost made him wish that the next Judoon to come by would knock four times.

Suddenly, the door to his cell burst open, and he jumped up. Before him stood a tall woman in a green leather jacket who bore absolutely no resemblance to the Judoon he was expecting to see. She walked up to him swiftly and took his hand.

“We need to run,” she said in a low voice, dragging him towards the door.

“Right. Yes.”

She pulled him forward, peeking out briefly before taking off at top speed down the long corridor, still clutching his hand tightly. This was certainly a role reversal. Usually he was the one grabbing hands and telling people to run for their lives.

They zigzagged through corridors, seemingly at random, though he had a sense from the purposeful look in his rescuer’s eyes that she knew exactly where she was going. He had an idle thought that they should have run into a Judoon by now.

His gaze flicked again to the woman firmly clutching his hand. Humanoid. Auburn hair. Green eyes. Mid-twenties, he would guess, if she was from a time before drugs to slow the aging process were invented. Of if she was from Oombuprak. But her fingers lacked webbing, so that option seemed unlikely. If fashion was anything to go by he would guess that she was a human from the early twenty-first century. Maybe late twentieth. Though, if that were the case, what was she doing on Chat Dif III in 8347?

They stopped briefly at the end of the hall and she pulled him so that their backs were against the cool metal wall as she peeked around the corner.

“Bugger. Judoon coming this way,” she muttered, looking around quickly before pulling him with her into a nearby supply cupboard.

“Surprised we didn’t run into any before now,” he whispered, pushed closely against her in the cramped space.

“Jack’s creating a distraction that should occupy most of them, while I get you to your TARDIS,” she whispered back, smirking slightly.

Jack. Harkness? Must be. How else could she know about the TARDIS? Though, last he checked Jack didn’t have the technology to get here. Maybe a future Jack? The man was immortal. Though that still couldn’t explain how anyone outside the Shadow Proclamation knew he was here. They kept no records and were notoriously tight-lipped about the identity of the prisoners they contained in Chat Dif III. No, the most likely explanation was that they found a way to follow him from Cardiff. Though, how they might have managed that, he hadn’t a clue.

“We need to get you down to confiscated goods on the ground floor,” she continued. “That’s where they’re holding the TARDIS. Do they have any kind of special fields over this planet that would prevent you from entering the vortex once we get you there?”

“No,” he replied, “their containment security and surveillance is supposed to be impossible to escape and they strip search prisoners to make sure they don’t have any vortex manipulators or their ilk. Plus, they need to be able to trans-temporally teleport suspects into holding cells, which they can’t do if they limit access to the vortex.”

He paused a moment. Her knowledge of these things went far beyond what he would expect of any human, aside from a time agent. Maybe Jack had taught her a few things?

“You’re Torchwood?”

“Yep,” she replied, popping the p in such a way that she might be mimicking him, had she ever heard him say the word.

He cleared his throat.

“So I’m the Doc–“

“Time to run again,” she said before he had a chance to ask her name, pulling him with her out the door, before immediately shoving him back inside again.

Through the door, he heard the muffled sound of her voice.

“Hello there, boys! Did you hear about the disturbance down in the Convention Chamber? Mad isn’t it?”

“You are not authorized on this level,” replied the harsh monotone of a Judoon.

He cracked the door open, preparing to jump in and help her. She didn’t deserve to be captured by the Shadow Proclamation for his sake. He most certainly was not worth that.

“What? Of course I am. I’m cleaning staff. Even high security holding cells need cleaning. Just returning my supplies to this cupboard here before heading home for the day.”

He felt her lean back against the cupboard, latch clicking as she closed it. He tried the door again and met firm resistance. That little… Wait, was that a particle-level bioscanner he just heard? Shit. Shitshitshitshit…

“Confirmed. Member of high security housekeeping staff. You may proceed.”

He let out a breath. If she was Torchwood, then how did she get herself into the Chat Dif III personnel records? Before he could contemplate this further, the door opened and she grabbed his hand again, pulling him with her down the corridor.

At the end of the hall, she pulled him into a lift, selecting the ground floor on the control panel and entering a code to prevent it from stopping at any other floors in transit. He felt it shudder into motion, and they began a slow descent down forty-seven floors.

“What did you think you were doing back there?” He turned to her, giving her a murderous glare. “Do you know what the Judoon could have done to you if you had been caught? We’re talking–”

“Yes, I’m quite aware of the consequences of trifling with the Shadow Proclamation.” She gave him a meaningful look. “I hacked the mainframe before coming to get you to give myself a plausible reason for being on that level.”

“You shouldn’t be risking yourself for me.”

Her eyebrows narrowed, and she spared him glance before returning her gaze to the steel lift doors. “I think I can be the judge of for whom I should risk my life, Doctor.”

The lift dinged and the doors opened onto another steel-lined hallway. He followed her to a large archway that opened onto a large, circular chamber where a large crowd had assembled. In the centre stood Jack Harkness, wearing nothing but his wrist computer.

“Really, Shadow Architect, how could you not want a piece of this?” Jack flashed his signature flirty smile, seemingly oblivious to the hundred Judoon pointing their weapons at him.

“Sir, you need to leave before I hold you in contempt of the Shadow Proclamation!” the Shadow Architect threatened, red-tinged eyes flashing dangerously.

“See, I’ve got this little S&M fantasy involving you, me and one of your high security holding cells,” Jack smirked, eyes roving her form. “The Judoon can watch if that’s your thing. I’m always up for an audience.”

The Doctor felt a tug on his arm.

“C’mon. This way.” The Doctor looked away from the spectacle to see his rescuer pulling him in the direction of a nondescript door across the hall.

“What about Jack?” he asked, slipping with her into what looked like some kind of storage room, with long rows of neatly catalogued items.

“I signalled to him that I got you, so he knows that he can give up the ruse,” she answered, leading him through the labyrinthine shelves in an expert manner. “I fixed his vortex manipulator, so he’ll be able to get back to the Hub just fine on his own.”

“I’m sorry, you did…you did WHAT?” the Doctor replied.

She rolled her eyes, but didn’t reply.

“And while we’re at it, how did you track me here? I was trans-temporally teleported!”

“You don’t have a monopoly on knowledge of temporal physics, Doctor.”

He grabbed her shoulders, then, to stop her.

“All I know is that you’ve demonstrated knowledge not available to even the most advanced scientists of your species until thirty centuries in your future. Jack may have taught you a bit, but even he wouldn’t be able to track that teleport the Judoon used or be able to repair his vortex manipulator.”

She raised her eyebrows.

“Relax, Doctor. I know better than to share information that could cause the human race to accelerate too quickly.”

He studied her face.

“You’re not from the twenty-first century, are you? You’ve…what? Fallen through time? Got sucked up by the rift and ended up in twenty-first century Cardiff? Or maybe you’re a time agent? You’re a long way from home, aren’t you?”

She twisted her lips.

“Yes and no.”

“But if you have the knowledge to fix Jack’s vortex manipulator, why don’t you just go home? Granted, the accuracy can be iffy, but you could probably get pretty close…”

Her eyes looked troubled, then, her face filled with an emotion he knew quite intimately. She bore the look of a woman who was running away.

“I can’t go home.”

His instincts told him not to press her, but his curiosity got the better of his tact.

“Why not?”

She bit her bottom lip, hesitating.

“Sometimes….sometimes you need to leave the past in the past and the future in the future. Just be who you are now rather than who you were or who you could have been or who you might be.”

He nodded in tacit understanding. A man on the run from his prophesied future could hardly argue with that. They began again on their meandering path through the storage room.

They turned a corner, and there, at the end of the aisle, stood a very familiar police box. He snapped his fingers and gave a little chuckle when the doors opened of their own accord. He so liked that little trick.

The two of them entered the TARDIS and his mind was flooded with a feeling of effervescent warmth. His ship sometimes had this reaction when he escaped from a particularly tricky scrape, but he hadn’t felt her this pleased since…he swallowed and ducked his head, pushing it from his mind, choosing instead to focus on his new passenger.

He did a double take. She was…well, _stroking_ one of the coral pillars, a soft smile on her face. That had to be the strangest reaction anyone has ever had to seeing the inside of his ship for the first time. Not that it was a _bad_ reaction, mind. As much as he looked forward to the inevitable “it’s bigger on the inside” comment, he found himself rather affected by how lovingly she looked at his ship. He cleared his throat.

“So, what do you think?” he asked, throwing his arms wide. He found himself wanting to impress her.

Her smile bloomed radiantly and her green eyes shone in a way he could not explain.

“She’s beautiful,” she replied, “inside and out.” Her lips twitched slightly, as though this was some kind of private joke, before the look dissipated and she met his eyes expectantly.

“You’re not going to ask about…” He gestured about him.

“I know a thing or two about temporal physics, Doctor, in case you hadn’t noticed. I imagine for a being, such as yourself, who walks in a world of 4+1 dimensions, bigger on the inside would be a party trick.”

“Weeeell…bit dull for a party trick, to be honest. Though I am quite brilliant at a party, I must say.” He winked. Hold on. What the hell did he do that for? Women always felt it was flirting, and he knew better by now than to lead some poor woman on. Learned a lesson or two from Martha on that.

“Aren’t you going to get us out of this place?” She gestured at the console and made her way over to the jump seat, plopping down as though this was all rather routine to her.

“Right. Yes. Of course.” He sprang into action, pulling levers and turning knobs until they were sitting safely in the vortex.

His guest pulled out a large plastic bag from her satchel and handed it to him.

“I nicked your stuff from the storage room. In case you want to go change.” She nodded towards the lime green boiler suit he was wearing.

“Right. Yes. I’ll just…” He gestured at the hallway over his shoulder, and took off towards his bedroom.

As he pulled a suit out of the wardrobe, he contemplated what it was about this woman that put him so off guard. He had met Jack’s recruits in the past, when he had assisted on an invasion or two over the years, but she did not quite fit that mould. It was not just the anachronistic level of scientific knowledge either, though that was certainly enough to catch his attention. It was that there was no fear underlying her competence, no instinctive drifting of her hands towards a weapon in face of danger. Indeed, there was something of himself in the way she seemed so at ease in this alien world, yet so ill-at-ease at the mention of her own history. It both scared and beguiled him.

***

Rose sighed, leaning her head back and putting her heels up on the edge of the console. She could not believe she was back here, in the TARDIS, with the Doctor. Oh, how she had longed for this when she was first separated from him over a year ago. But to be here now, after all this time…she did not know how to feel.

She felt an affectionate nudge in the back of her mind, and jumped slightly. Oh, of course. The TARDIS. When she had felt the Doctor’s telepathic presence on Chat Dif III, she had quickly erected mental barriers to shield herself, not wanting to distract him with the knowledge that she was a telepath. However, she’d had a bond with the TARDIS ever since she had looked into the heart of the ship, and mental barriers would be useless against that sort of bond. She sent the ship her own warm greeting in return. She had missed the TARDIS almost as much as she had missed her pilot. She just wished that her relationship with the man could be as uncomplicated as her relationship with his ship.

When the Doctor reappeared, he was wearing a blue suit she had never seen before. He put his hands in his pockets and strode over to her.

“So, you seem to have me at a disadvantage here,” he smiled, leaning back on his heels and rocking forward. “You seem to know quite a lot about me, but I don’t even know your name.”

She froze. What was she supposed to say? She had not been lying when she told Jack that she could not just waltz back into the Doctor’s life and pick up where she left off.

“How about first you tell me what you did to tick off the Shadow Proclamation.”

She was deflecting, she knew, but this was an issue that did need to be addressed. The Shadow Proclamation might be harsh, but from what Jack told her, their laws were just.

“Oh, that was just a misunderstanding,” he shrugged. “Bit of he-said she-said and some cultural mix-ups.”

“If they locked you up in Chat Dif III that implies that they believe you broke intergalactic law, which is hardly an arbitrary set of rules, Doctor,” she replied, crossing her arms over her chest.

“Weeeeeell…never been one to play by the rules, me,” he grinned. “Besides, you must not believe I did anything too terrible if you decided to break me out.”

She hesitated a moment, glancing away.

“I rescued you because…because I believe at heart you are a good man,” she replied. “A good man who did not deserve what the Shadow Proclamation would have done to him. But even good men can do terrible things when driven by duty or grief or desperation.”

She met his eyes steadily. Now it was his turn to glace away.

“You’ve known me all of an hour and yet you are so sure of my character.”

She paused and tilted her head, trying desperately to come up with a plausible reply.

“I have…a rather thorough knowledge of your history.” She bit her bottom lip, hoping he wouldn’t press her.

“Oh, do tell. Has Jack been gossiping about me? Or…oh no. Have you read my UNIT file?”

She suppressed a grin. His UNIT file really was a laugh.

The Doctor cleared his throat and grimaced. “I’ll take that as a yes.” He rubbed the back of his neck, looking absently at the time rotor.

“Guess we’re at a stalemate, then,” he said, pacing around the console to flip a few levers. “I’d rather not get into the gritty details of what the Shadow Proclamation wanted with me, and you don’t want to give me your name.” He sniffed and looked her quickly up and down. “Too bad, really, you seem like someone I might like to know.”

“Well, it’s not as if I know your name, either, _Doctor_.”

The Doctor chuckled, tugging his ear and eyeing her with a grin.

“Touché.”

She bit her bottom lip and grinned back. Oh, this man and his ship and his adventures. They never lost their allure.

“Well. Guess you’ll want to get back to Cardiff then. Unless…” He hesitated.

“Unless…?”

“You could come with me…if you want.” He shrugged. “Just for one trip. A thank you for your help. Torchwood agent such as yourself, must be curious about distant alien planets.”

He was asking her…? Her mind reeled, and before she could stop herself, words were tumbling out of her mouth.

“That sounds _fantastic_.”

He grinned manically, a note of delight issuing from the back of his throat.

“Well then. Allons-y.”

She took a breath. What the hell had she just got herself into?


	3. Restored

Rose stood back and watched the Doctor dash about the console, all manic energy. She could not believe that she was the Doctor’s companion once more, if only for one trip. Of course, he had no idea who she really was. However, the fact that he’d invited her along–this her, not some memory of who she once was–heartened her. Oh, how she had missed this life.

“So, where are we headed?” she asked, barely suppressing a grin.

“Oh no no no no no, _that_ is a surprise. Wouldn’t want to ruin your first trip by giving it all away before we even leave the TARDIS!”

He expertly turned a knob, looking up at the time rotor speculatively, tip of his tongue pressed against the roof of his mouth. Rose felt the ship jolt and saw the Doctor’s lips widen into a smile. He gestured towards the door.

“Well, go on then. Take a look.” He bounced on the balls of his feet.

She felt a giggle rise in her throat. It was an odd feeling in her new body. She could not remember the last time she had giggled. She suspected it was on her last day with him.

She stepped outside and was met with the sight of activity in every direction. With a lavender sky above and baby blue grass below, people with pale yellow skin and three eyestalks danced and sang in a breeze that smelled almost like roasted almonds, though with a hint of something else that was spicy and entirely foreign. Booths selling native delicacies hawked their wares, and almost eerie, electronic-sounding music wafted through the air. Towering over the whole scene was the strangest rock formation that she had ever seen. It was as if a mountain had burst open, but the action had been paused mid-explosion. Hard stone shot out of the towering peak like flash-frozen drops of flying liquid. At the top of the formation stood a massive, glowing object, rapidly changing colours and sparking, a giant strobe light over the celebration.

Suddenly, an overwhelming sense of foreboding rippled down her time sense. It was as if they approached something solid and important, dangerous and monumental. Yet it rumbled, jolting crust fracturing over a molten shell. It made her ears ring, and for a second she could taste time’s plaintive wails, poisonous and metallic on the back of her tongue. It gagged her. She shook her head and forcefully blocked it out.

She recalled the Doctor explaining long ago that he almost never looked at an individual’s timeline. It had confused her then, not understanding yet the confused terrorheartbreak of seeing countless possibilities of lives filter through her senses. Now, she too blocked them out. Yet she, like the Doctor, could always sense obliquely their general ebb and flow, feeling the general direction of the tide, with only the very strongest of individual waves breaking through her deliberate inattention. And, at the moment, they were approaching a veritable tsunami.

She heard the Doctor walk up behind her, striding casually to her side, nearly bubbling over with excitement. If he could feel what she was feeling, he didn’t let on. Then again, with the way he courted danger, perhaps this glee was his reaction to what she’d just felt. Well, it had been a while since she’d had a proper adventure. Getting her unease under control, she grinned up at him.

“Welcome to Great Magellan,” he said, eyes twinkling down at her.

She instinctively linked her arm through his. His eyes lingered on their twined arms, and he smiled softly.

“I love it,” she told him, and his smile widened.

“The locals are the Hedons,” he said, nodding towards the nearest yellow person, who was blowing figures out of green smoke to entertain a circle of three-eyed children. “And _that_ is the Phosphorus Carousel of the Great Magellan Gestadt.” He gestured towards the flashing structure atop the exploding mountain.

“Why is it all…?” She made an exploding gesture with her hands.

“The planet’s core is unstable. Their scientists were getting readings that it was ready to blow and told everyone to prepare for the apocalypse. Naturally, anarchy erupted and everyone started living like it was their last day alive. The whole planet became one big party. But, right at the last minute, someone figured out how to use a stasis field to effectively put the explosion on pause, creating the Gestadt.” He gestured towards the exploding mountain. “However, ordinary folks, not being scientifically inclined, believed that it was their sudden revelry that convinced the gods to spare them, so the people became devoted to continuing their fun and debauchery lest a higher power decided to rescind their pardon. So no one really stopped living like it’s the end of the world.”

Rose took this in, furrowing her brow.

“When does it end, though? Isn’t there a point where they realise they need to start living their normal lives again? To move on and progress?”

The Doctor shrugged.

“Weeell…it all catches up with them eventually. It isn’t a permanent solution. On the hundredth anniversary of the initial explosion something ends up disrupting the stasis field’s power source, and the explosion wipes out half the planet. It allows them to rebuild, though. Eventually they become one of the great gems of the galaxy. Huge trading hub and cultural capital. But for now, it’s all about the _carpe diem_.” 

Rose eyed the merrymakers, feeling suddenly young and carefree again, the heaviness in her heart lifting just a bit. Perhaps for a while, at least, she could wish those years in Pete’s World away and be someone entirely new. Not Rose Tyler, but a new woman to match the new face. If she let herself just forget the past, she could be the Doctor’s new companion, seeing alien planets for the first time, and living on one adrenaline high to the next.

She grinned and bumped the Doctor’s shoulder with her own.

“C’mon. I want to try the local cuisine.” 

***

The Doctor watched from afar as his nameless companion chatted animatedly with a vendor of Chwall’itt, a celery-like vegetable smothered in preserved fruit. She had said that she would be right back with their food, but she had been standing there fifteen minutes chatting away, and he was starting to get hungry.

He studied her as he approached. She had seemed so serious on Chat Dif III, level-headed in the face of danger, all business as usual. Yet since arriving on Great Magellan she had a new lightness about her. And now, making herself at home with the locals, not a trace of xenophobia in her body language, he could not help but admire her ability to connect with someone so different from herself. He found himself wondering if he might entice her into a second trip. Coming up behind her, he could just make out the conversation she was having with the female Hedon.

“…that must be terrible for you.”

She put a hand on the Hedon’s arm, brushing the dewy skin softly with her thumb. All three of the Hedon’s eyes glanced down at her hand and welled up with tears.

“I just…” The Hedon’s voice broke, and she looked distractedly away. “They’ve already taken my eldest son. This one will either grow up an orphan as well, or die before he has a chance to start.”

“Who’s they?”

“The Outsiders. They run the carousel. If we pay their fee, they’ll take our children off planet, so they don’t have to grow up with Doomsday looming.” She nodded toward the Gestadt. “They’re the only ones who can afford off-world teleports.” 

His companion clutched the Hedon’s hand.

“It’s an awful thing, to lose a child,” she said softly, glancing away quickly before meeting the Hedon woman’s eyes once more. “But it sounds like you did what was best for him. Just as you will for the one on the way. Take heart in that. Your son lives on because you had the strength to do what was best for him.”

The Hedon woman wiped each of her eyes, with a large pink handkerchief.

“Thank you.”

The Doctor cleared his throat, making his presence behind them known. His companion whipped around and gave him a smile, grabbing their food, and patting the Hedon’s hand.

“It’s been lovely talking to you.”

“And to you. Happy Centenary.”

As they walked back to a set of picnic tables where Hedons and tourists of various species laughed and mingled, he grabbed her hand impulsively. There was something that just felt right about the way her fingers linked with his, the graze of her thumb over his like a forgotten dream. They sat down at a table, facing the Gestadt, munching on their Chwall’itt with their free hands.

“So tell me about the carousel. How did it come to be?”

“Well, that’s an interesting story, actually,” he replied around a crunchy mouthful, swallowing quickly before continuing on. “It showed up right after the mountain exploded. Brought here by off-worlders hoping to capitalize on the on all the people living like it’s the end of the world. Hoped to make it a big tourist destination. And they succeeded. The carousel and the Gestadt are renowned across the galaxy. There’s even a local legend that’s grown up around it. To leave Great Magellan without riding the carousel is tempting fate.”

“Tempting fate with what?” she grinned broadly, looking slyly up at him. He couldn’t help but grin back.

“Well, the course of your life, I suppose. Though it is a funny turn of phrase isn’t it? Tempting fate. As if the powers of time cared enough about any one individual to drive the course of their life. Granted, there are some things I’ve seen…” His mind drifted to Rose, eyes golden, with the power of all of time and space at her disposal, a benevolent goddess of time. 

His companion seemed to sense the need to draw his mind back to the present. She squeezed his hand and turned again to the great glowing carousel, pulling him with her as she got up and strode over to a better vantage point.

“Oh, that’s brilliant, that is. What’s next? The Dodgems of Destiny?” She giggled, and he felt himself joining in.

“Weeeeell…can’t say I’ve ever heard of anything quite like that, though they do worship candy floss and pogo sticks on Isolgo. However, if we want to make a real tour of the universe’s best fun fairs we should really head to Hedgewick’s World of Wonders next. Excellent Spacey Zoomer, and the Mushroom Terror is a hoot.” 

“Hmm…” she said, nodding. His heart leapt when she didn’t point out that he had only promised her one trip.

“You’re going to have to tell me your name at some point, you know,” he teased, beaming down at her.

She gave him a wry grim.

“We’ll just have to wait and see how this goes, hmm?” 

His heart sank, and he nodded and glanced down at his trainers. Apparently he hadn’t earned that yet. After a moment, he felt a hand on his arm, rubbing up and down gently.

“Oh, don’t be like that. C’mon. Let’s go ride that carousel.”

***

As they walked out of the lift that took them up the side of the mountain, joined hands swinging between them, Rose found years of tension receding from her body. New world, new adventure. A fresh start, traveling amongst the stars with the Doctor.

“So, what were you talking to that Hedon lady about?” the Doctor asked as they joined the queue for the carousel, the bright, flashing fire beneath the clear material molded into the shapes of unfamiliar animals causing her to squint and avert her eyes from the spectacle.

“Oh, she is upset that she found out she’s pregnant again. It’s not very blessed news when you constantly have the destruction of your planet literally hanging over your head. Plus, she’s already had to send her son away.”

“Hmm…” He nodded, eying her thoughtfully, before glancing away when she caught his eye.

“The thing is, though, Doctor, she said that people are paying this group called the Outsiders to send their children off planet. Doesn’t that seem odd to you?”

“Odd? They’re afraid their planet’s going to blow up. And if some off-worlders found a way to get some people off planet for a profit that seems like a good thing for everyone involved.”

“Yes, but if they can make a profit from taking as many people off planet as possible, why not take anyone who will pay them to go? Why just children? And it’s not like they’re afraid of coming to this planet too often. Some of them have made this place a tourist destination! They stay here to mind their business, leaving themselves at risk like everyone else.” She gestured towards the carousel.

His eyes narrowed. “Good point.”

“Plus, according to the woman I talked to, they use teleports, which should give them the ability to transport an unlimited number of people, so if they’re interested in profits, there should be no limits on the kind or number of people they transport.”

The Doctor raised his eyebrows. “Okay. Another point in the odd column.”

She looked out over the view from the top of the Gestadt, experiencing a peculiar sort of vertigo. The civilization below lost a bit of its magic from the birds-eye view. What had looked like celebration now appeared to be a sort of despondent melee. Hedons minding their stalls smiled at customers only to lose all energy once they thought no one was looking. Even the old man blowing figures in smoke now appeared to be nothing more than an old addict from this angle. It occurred to her then that the celebration was nothing but a show for the tourists. This was a society that was holding on almost in spite of itself, waiting for a death that had been too long coming.

Out the corner of her eye she caught sight of three large eyes peeking out of a manhole (one of which was bloody and completely swollen over) before quickly disappearing again below ground. She narrowed her eyes and took off to investigate, pulling the Doctor with her by the hand.

“Wh–What? Where are we going? I thought we were going to ride the carousel…”

“I think the answer’s down here,” she replied, pulling up the nearly invisible manhole cover to reveal a ladder hanging down the side into a deep, narrow hole.

“Is it?” the Doctor asked, voice raising an octave.

“Yes,” she replied, placing her trainer on the first rung of the rickety rope ladder.

He grabbed her wrist, pulling her up, so she was forced to stand fully above ground once more. He placed his hands on her shoulders and met her eyes steadily.

“Not that I’m against descending into a nice scary dark hole in the ground, but I’d rather have all the facts as to why you find this a good idea before we do so.”

She sighed. How was it that he always missed the obvious things?

“I just spotted a Hedon child peeking out of this very hole in a rather suspicious manner. It looked injured.”

“Right. Yes.” The Doctor rubbed the back of his neck and nodded slowly. “Well, down the nice scary dark hole it is, then.”

***

The harsh burn of vaporized chemicals stung his throat as he descended rickety ladder. Hm…white phosphorus. He heard his companion cough harshly below him, but he couldn’t see her through the thick haze of white smoke. The deeper they descended the more overpowering the smoke became, invading his sinuses and requiring him to employ his respiratory bypass. 

As they reached the floor, he grabbed his companion’s shoulder, pulling her closely to him, and bringing his lips to her ear.

“Need to go back,” he muttered hoarsely. “White phosphorus. Not safe for a human.” 

As he spoke, smoke flooded his larynx and he was overtaken by a coughing fit. He felt a tug on his arm and followed her lead, distracted by the poison choking his senses. After a minute, he realised he was breathing easier and dared to open his eyes again.

“We’re in some kind of workroom.” His companion coughed, hair sticking to her sweating brow, and eyes tinged bright red with irritation. “Smoke doesn’t seem as bad in here.”

He gripped her shoulders with urgency. “We need to get you out of here. Prolonged exposure to white phosphorus is lethal to humans.”

She shook her head. “Don’t worry about me. It’s not so bad here. What we need to worry about is saving them.” She nodded behind him, and he turned, following her line of vision. 

There, in the middle of the large cavern, were hundreds of Hedon children, yellow faces tinged a sickly green, and bits of burnt flesh forming gaping wounds on their bodies. They seemed to be mining some kind of mineral, hacking at the walls with pickaxes, and hauling carts full of it. They were feeding it into a large machine, which was producing a fine, white powder.

A great furnace dominated the chamber, its smokestack of about twenty feet in diameter rising through a ceiling filled with wires and turning gears. The children were feeding the white powder into it through hatches in its sides. Inside it he could spy blinding white flames. Sparks flew out and scorched the children’s skin, leaving large, oozing welts.

In a corner of the room, was a heap of what look suspiciously like a heap of ashen yellow dead bodies.

He felt anger distil in his chest, spreading through his veins, liquid energy sparking at his nerve endings, telling him to end this and enact revenge on the perpetrators. Somewhere on this planet was someone who needed reminding that no one got away with schemes like this without answering to the Oncoming Storm.

“We need to put a stop to this.” 

She met his gaze then, her pain at seeing these children in such agony evident in her eyes.

“Of course. What else would we do?”

***

They entered a control room off to the side, startling a group of humanoid aliens with deep magenta skin, who were huddled around a computer. Rose relished the feeling of smoke-free air filling her lungs, hearing the slight sucking sound of the chamber re-sealing itself off behind them. 

The Doctor held out the psychic paper.

“Hello! We’re from the parent company, just dropping by for a routine inspection. How do you do?”

One of the aliens stepped forward, eyes narrowed.

“As Chief Inspector for East Gilesean Company, I’d say you most certainly are not.”

So the fun began. They were promptly surrounded and tied up back to back. Two of the aliens were left to question them.

“Corporate spies, perhaps? The Epsilonians have been trying to copy our business model for years…”

“Nah, woulda come up with a better cover in that case. This lot’s clearly amateurs. Look at ‘em.” 

Off in a corner, she saw the other three aliens still hunched over the computer, the appearance of the Doctor and herself clearly not as disturbing as whatever they were looking at on that screen.

“…dunno. They’re dressed just like that couple on that soap on Epsilon Delta. The Contins! His coat looks just like the one he was wearing in that episode where he was exploring her sexual limits.”

“True. The wife in that has green hair, though. And even so, that’s hardly proof they’re Epsilonians…”

“What I’d like to know,” the Doctor broke in, “is why you are enslaving hundreds of Hedon children and putting them in working conditions that will kill them within three months.”

The first alien turned to the second. “You’re right. Definitely not Epsilonians. No subtlety whatsoever.”

“Oi!”

“What he means to ask,” Rose interrupted him before he had a chance to go on a babbling rant about just how wonderfully subtle he believed himself to be, “is why you’ve recruited so many children. Is there something wrong with your systems?”

The second alien shrugged. “The stasis field has been losing stability for the last week. We think there’s a bug in the programming. We’re having to maintain a greater level of labour to provide it with enough power in the meantime.”

“Mind if I take a look?” she heard the Doctor ask from behind her.

One of the aliens standing at the computer turned, then, interest seemingly piqued.

“Do you actually know anything about stasis fields?”

“Big energy-sucking things that suspend bits of space in time? Yeah, I’d say I know a thing or two.”

“Untie him,” the alien ordered. The Doctor rushed over to the computer.

“So the carousel is a by-product of the stasis field?” Rose asked their captors.

“Well, we were afraid the phosphorous flames would scare the tourists, so we made them a feature of the carousel. Great idea, too. It’s made us buckets.”

“So, just out of curiosity, what exactly is your interest in keeping this thing running? You’re off-worlders, yes?”

“Business, what else? The whole ‘live like it’s your last day’ bit is a marketing dream. A volcano put on pause mid-eruption is a natural draw, so we figured out how to build the stasis field using the planet’s natural phosphorus reserves, built a transparent carousel over the flames, and charged ridiculous admission for it. Who are we to deny the power of supply and demand? The universe wants spectacle, so we provide it.”

“At the cost of the lives of young Hedon children?”

The alien shrugged. “Well, they most likely wouldn’t have had a chance to be born if we let the Gestadt blow in the first place. We figure they owe us.”

The Doctor’s voice becomes dangerous then. “I think you need to leave.”

The alien spluttered. “I beg your pardon?”

“This stasis field is going to fail within the quarter-hour. The Gestadt’s preparing to blow.”

The aliens shared a look and rushed to a box in the corner, which appeared to contain a stash of teleports. In a bright flash, they were gone.

The Doctor walked back over to Rose and released her from her bonds before returning to examining the computer system.

“Is it really getting ready to blow?”

“Yep. Through I can patch the program to keep it going a little while longer.”

Rose nodded. “Good.” She grabbed the box of teleports. “That gives us enough time to evacuate those children.”

Even though it saddened her heart that all those people out there were going to die today, she had long ago accepted that everything had its time and everything died. This was the Centenary, she realised now, putting together what the Hedon lady had said and the demise of this civilization that the Doctor had described. It was a fixed point. The very same fixed point she’d sensed since they had arrived. She was just happy that by their intervention, she and the Doctor managed to save a few of these children’s lives. She knew that saving everyone out there would be too much, that time would rupture. So she took heart in this little piece of good.

***

“Quick.” The Doctor threw his companion the sonic and she caught it deftly. “Setting 443D will recalibrate those teleports so that it sends them to the best orphanage in the galaxy. One of the few I know of that actually try to give the children a nice, loving home. Advanced medical tech, too. They’ll be able to treat their injuries.”

She nodded, and headed off with the sonic and box of teleports. He stared after her a moment. The rare occasions that he ran across that kind of human compassion always floored him. She had no idea how long he could keep the stasis field going, yet she took it upon herself to get those kids out, rather than to use the extra time to book it back to the TARDIS. Of course, what she didn’t know was that his patch could stabilise the stasis field for quite a bit longer than a few minutes.

He could feel the fixed point approaching, knew in his bones that it had to stand. Half the planet burned today, would have without question had he not come here, so apparently now it was up to him to make it happen. And really, he should do it. They may have driven all of the Gileseans temporarily off-planet, but once they realised that the planet hadn’t really blown up, they’d be back to their imperialist ways, putting more and more Hedons into slavery, not caring if it lead these poor people to drawn out and painful deaths. 

His finger hovered over the keyboard, ready to type out the sequence that would deactivate the stasis field. Through the window he could see that his companion was teleporting the last group of Hedon children out. He should do it now. All of his instincts told him to do it now. 

He put his hands in his pockets. He could not yet again be the cause of such death and destruction. Perhaps the Gileseans wouldn’t return. Perhaps, when they did, the Hedons would be able to stage a revolt and find a way to fuel the stasis field that didn’t inevitably kill all of its workers, even though he, with his great big Time Lord brain, could not. Leaving the stasis field intact did not necessarily spell a slow and painful death for the civilization, as they gave their lives one-by-one to keep the planet from blowing up. And time could be rewritten.

***

Rose ran into the control room, panting to catch her breath. She was beginning to sense the smoke was doing lasting damage to her lungs. The Doctor was studying the computer interface in earnest, but looked up at her abruptly as she entered.

“They’re all out?”

“Yep. All off-planet.”

“Good.” He nodded, seeming to consider the screen in front of him a moment, before turning to her and taking her hand. “Let’s go.”

“How long do we have until it blows?”

He shrugged. “Oh, a good many years now, I’d reckon. I patched it up quite nicely.”

She shook her head. “But today’s the Centenary, Doctor. That’s what that Hedon lady I was talking to said. And you said the Gestadt blows on the hundredth anniversary. Plus, there’s no way to fuel the thing in a way that doesn’t slowly kill the workers.”

She felt the fixed point approaching, wobbling on its axis, her senses drowning out all else. Her vision blurred and she could taste bile rising in her throat as the timelines dipped and dived and waved between her ears. How could he possibly not feel it? For there was no doubt In her mind that it was his decision right here that was causing time to lose stability around them. What had happened to this man, who used to be able to make the hard choices? To acknowledge that everything has its time and everything dies? It occurred to her then that just as she was not the same Rose Tyler, this was not the same Doctor. All she knew was that in this moment in time, she needed to be the woman he taught her to be. As much as she had changed, she had never stopped making a stand, and if he couldn’t, it was up to her to have the guts to do what was right here.

She turned to the computer and saw the screen opened to the program that would shut down the stasis field. A warning signal flashed above the deactivation protocol. ‘DEACTIVATING THE STASIS FIELD IS IRREVERSIBLE. UPON DEACTIVATION, THE GESTADT WILL BLOW WITHIN THE QUARTER HOUR.’ Without hesitating, she typed the necessary sequence, feeling the timelines right themselves as she did so. The Doctor’s eyes widened with panic and anger, the ice in his eyes sending chills down her spine. However, they didn’t have time to argue about it. 

They ran. Bursting out the emergency exist, they hurried down the rocky slope of the Gestadt, arms thrown backwards as their trainers slid against the gravel, and raced against time to the TARDIS. Just as they reached it, they heard screams in the background, and Rose looked over her shoulder to see the Phosphorus Carousel explode in a blinding flash of light before the Doctor pulled her inside. He rushed to the console, sending them into the vortex before they could be caught in the planet’s destruction.

The Doctor rounded on her then, shoulders squared and eyes piercing, the full force of the Oncoming Storm focused solely on her.

“What the hell do you think you were doing? You just destroyed half that planet! I’ve seen my companions do a lot of stupid things in my life, but never in all my years has one done something so utterly–“

“I was preserving a fixed point in time. You said yourself the planet was destroyed on the Centenary. What the _fuck_ were you doing back there?”

“I was saving people’s _lives_. It’s what I do. Time can be rewritten.” He sniffed, pacing around the console, glaring at her from behind the time rotor.

“That wasn’t saving lives, Doctor. That was attempting to uproot the causal nexus of that planet’s entire future! You said yourself that that destruction allows for a better society to form. Plus, that planet should have been destroyed a century ago, and since then its languished in stasis, fear of the future preventing its progress and haunting its residents. ”

The Doctor’s eyes flashed, and his lips twitched subtly.

“With an extra fifty years from my patch, who’s to say they wouldn’t have found a way to overthrow the Gileseans and keep the thing going on their own. This way, everybody lives. Doctor: 1, Death and Destruction: 0. Time Lord Victorious.”

“Cut the crap. The only way they would have been able to keep that stasis field going is to slowly and painfully kill each and every worker. Even if you’d managed to convince the Gileseans to stop hurting the children, someone would have to mine the phosphorus and feed that flame. There was no way to do it without killing every recruit. And even then the stasis field won’t last forever. Not to mention the fact that altering Great Magellan’s history like that would chart a new course that would mess with all kinds of timelines. One life affects another, which affects another. Not only are you denying this world a better future, you’re altering the course of generations. People who would have been born may no longer be. In effect, you’d be erasing people from _time_ , Doctor.”

“Different people would spring up in their place. No net harm.” His stance was still rigid, but his eyes lost some of their fire. He was grasping at straws now.

She took a breath, and suddenly her voice was very soft. “Who are you to decide who lives and who dies, who enters or leaves existence? You aren’t a god, Doctor.”

He chuckled humourlessly. “Aren’t I? Last of the Time Lords. It’s in my power to chart a course for the universe.”

“Will you listen to yourself? Why would you even WANT to be a god? To bear the guilt of every life you fail to save? To take all the horror in the universe on yourself? To allow yourself to be the final arbiter of right and wrong? I’m sorry, Doctor, but I don’t think you’d make a very good god. I don’t think anyone would.”

The Doctor held her gaze, then, just for a moment. 

“I just–I can’t–“ His Adam’s apple bobbed and he looked briefly at the ceiling before glancing at her and looking away again. “I–“ His mouth opened and closed. Abruptly, he turned on his heel and stalked off into the bowels of his ship.

Rose sighed and collapsed onto the jump seat.

“What’s happened to him?” she asked the empty room.

The TARDIS hummed sadly.

***

The Doctor leaned his head back against the headboard, letting the hum of the TARDIS soothe him. She had been right. She had been absolutely, one hundred percent right. He had felt the approach of that fixed point, yet had ignored the potential ramifications, refusing to yet again to let the destruction just happen, when he knew it needed to. Looking back over the past two weeks, his desire to defy time, symbolic as its passing minutes were of this incarnation’s sprint towards its prophesied demise, dominated his every move. While he still did not feel prepared to accept that his death was coming, he knew he needed to stop avoiding his responsibility to the universe. It was his duty to uphold the laws of time, not to toy with them on his whim.

He took comfort in the familiar details of the room around him, noting the pictures of two beaming people on the corkboard, the purple top draped over the chair, the collection of alien rag mags collecting dust on the bedside table, even the dirty knickers that littered the floor. What his companion had told him was exactly what he had needed to hear, exactly what _She_ would have said in the same situation. Hell, what she had done on that planet, taking matters into her own hands and challenging his decisions, standing up for what she knew was right, was so like _Her_ as well. He shook his head. After all this time, he really needed to stop with the pronouns. Her name was too worthy of remembrance. Rose Tyler. This woman reminded him of Rose Tyler. Her compassion, her tenacity, her ability to do what’s right even if it meant defying him, her zest for danger, these were all of the things he so needed in someone by his side. All he knew was he needed to keep her in his life. Desperately.

But after everything that had happened today, how could she possibly want to?

***

Rose paced her new room in agitation. Though she knew in her heart of hearts that she had done the right thing, she was afraid that she had irrevocably alienated the Doctor. She sat down on the bed and sighed, sending the TARDIS feelings of thanks for the room. She had really outdone herself this time. It was downright luxurious. The king bed took up half the room, decked out in TARDIS-blue satin, a beautiful writing desk and a fancy antique vanity occupying its opposite corners. Her ensuite was all marble, with soft lighting and a tub that was really more of a small jacuzzi. She suspected the ship was doing her damnedest to get her to stay.

She felt the TARDIS nudge her mind then, seemingly guiding her towards the bedside table. She opened the drawer and found her secret stash of photos, the ones she had kept under her mattress so that the Doctor wouldn’t discover that she secretly spent hours reminiscing over his old face. But the old him wasn’t the only person in these photos. There was her mum and Mickey as well, and a number of the old her and this him that had a bit too much emotion behind the eyes to display openly on her wall. Her heart constricted. At long last, her eyes fell on the final picture. She may have lost her mum and Mickey, but she still had one person in this universe she could go to with her Doctor troubles.

Pulling her phone and her sonic out of her bag, she made a few adjustments to give herself universal roaming. Taking a deep breath, she dialled a number she knew by heart.

“Rose! What happened to you guys?” Jack’s voice sounded concerned.

“Um, well, the Doctor kind of asked me to come with him.”

She could practically hear Jack rolling his eyes. “Of course he did, Rose. It’s what I’ve been telling you all along. That man lo–“

“I didn’t tell him my name.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“Who does he think you are then?”

“Just some random Torchwood agent you recruited. Though my knowledge of temporal physics tipped him off, so he thinks I’m from the future and somehow got stranded in the twenty-first century.”

Jack snorted. “Well, he’s always been a bit thick.”

“We went to this planet…and there was this fixed point. Half the planet had to die. But he was going to alter it. I had to take action myself and make sure it happened. And he was so angry, Jack. I don’t think he’s going to let me stay with him. But I think he needs me. Or someone, at least. There’s something going on with him. Something making him reckless. How do I get him to let me stay?”

Jack let out a long breath. “Well, for starters, you could always tell him your name.”

She rubbed her eyes. “If he wants me to be here it needs to because he accepts this me, not some memory of me.” There was more to this of course, but she wasn’t ready to delve into her feelings on this matter at the present.

“Rose, he wouldn’t–“ Jack cut himself off, seeming to realise this argument would be futile, after having it with her time and again over the previous months. “I think you just need to be yourself here, Rose. The Doctor knows as well as you what altering a fixed point could mean for the universe. Once he’s calmed down a bit I’m sure he’ll realise you did the right thing. You being yourself is exactly what he needs, Rose. Just…let him come round in his own time.”

She sighed and bit her bottom lip. “Thanks, Jack.”

“I can guarantee you one thing, Rose. That man is unable to resist you, no matter the regeneration, no matter whether he knows it’s you or not. It’ll be okay. You’ll see.”

***

The Doctor sat in the doorway of the TARDIS, legs dangling over the edge and into space as he looked out over a swirling pink nebula. It had been four hours since they left Great Magellan, and he was trying desperately to think of a way to convince his new companion to stay with him. Suddenly, he heard footsteps behind him, and he felt the warmth of another body settling down next to him.

He waited a long moment, assuming that she had a reason for seeking him out. Eventually, he realised that she was waiting for him to speak first.

“You were right.” 

She nodded. “I know.”

He hesitated, knowing that if this was going to work, he would need to come clean. Nonetheless, this didn’t make his next confession any easier.

“The Judoon arrested me because I altered a fixed point in time.”

Her eyes widened.

“You did what? How could–?” She shook her head and closed her eyes, taking a deep breath. When she looked at him again, deep concern was the only emotion he could read in her eyes.

“What happened?” she asked, laying her hand gently on his arm.

“I–“ He swallowed, looking away to stare down at the nebula below. “There was this colony on Mars in 2059. Bowie Base One. Everyone there was supposed to die. It was a part of history, an integral step that prompted humans to leave their home planet and populate the universe. But I was able to save them. Captain Adelaide Brooke and two others. Brought them back to Earth in my TARDIS.”

“How is it that time didn’t collapse? You didn’t completely rewrite human history, did you? ”

He buried his face in hands and sighed before staring straight ahead once more.

“Captain Brooke killed herself when she realised what I’d done. The lives of the other two weren’t significant enough to alter the causal nexus.”

He started when he felt her fingers weave through his, her thumb caressing his lightly. He looked at her then, amazed that this woman, who seemed to understand so well the repercussions of his actions, did not react with anger or even disappointment in him with this confession. 

She reached up, caressing his face briefly before dropping her hand once again to her side.

“I’m sorry,” she said, genuine concern in her eyes. “It’s thankless, what you do for the universe. It’s no wonder that once in a while you try to defy what you know must be, desperate for a happy ending.”

She bit her lip then, as if mulling over her next sentence carefully.

“How long have you been on your own?” she asked, at long last.

He made a half-hearted noise of amusement. “What makes you think I was on my own?”

She gazed at him steadily.

“None of that would ever have happened if you’d had someone to stop you. And I suspect the loneliness makes you more desperate.”

He stared at her in amazement. How was it that one human woman whom he’d known for less than twenty-four hours already understood him so well? He gulped and returned his gaze to the Earth below.

“It’s been three years since Donna left,” he said softly. “She was the last to travel with me. I still see her sometimes, but…” He shrugged.

“The universe just isn’t the same when you have no one to share it with,” she finished his aborted statement.

He felt her thumb brushing his and the weight of her head lean against his shoulder.

“Well, we can’t have any more of that, can we?” she asked.

“More of what?”

“The loneliness. You’ve got me now.”

He raised his eyebrows and looked down at her in surprise.

“Do I?”

“You do.”

He felt a warmth spread through his chest, banishing cold despair from his bones. It lit him up from the inside.

“I don’t even know your name,” he said in wonder.

She bit her bottom lip and looked away, silent for a long moment.

“I’m…Iris. Iris Fletcher.”

He beamed at her, as she met his eye again.

“Lovely to meet you Iris.”

Lovely indeed.


	4. Regretted

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the hiatus on this! Life has been getting in the way of writing of late, but I'm back at college now, and as writing is what I do when I want to procrastinate on ~other~ things, I imagine updates will be more frequent again. I'm fairly unsure about this chapter, but I think I may just need to accept that I will never be 100% happy with anything I write.
> 
> Note: I have taken great license with the actual historical figure contained herein. I do not mean this as an accurate portrayal of his personality. Also, I have no idea if he ever had an assistant. She is entirely of my creation.

Rose stood in her ensuite, grimacing at a bouncy auburn curl. Yep, she was definitely not the bouncy sort in this body.   
  
“No more heated rollers,” she told the TARDIS.  
  
The lights blinked twice, and a floppy bottle-green fedora that matched her skirt appeared next to her forty-third century hairdryer. She sighed and put it on.  
  
“Well, I suppose that helps.”  
  
The TARDIS hummed.  
  
She pulled at her wrap, catching her own eye in the mirror and biting her lower lip.  
  
She’d lied to him.  
  
She had been omitting information and skirting around questions all of the previous day, but it had not been until the very end that she had told an outright lie. Of course, she’d known that she would have to give him some name and that her own was definitely out of the question. Still, it had been much more difficult than she had anticipated. She had never lied to him before.  
  
Iris Fletcher. It was an old Torchwood alias that they had agreed upon for use in undercover missions. A flower name and an old English occupational surname. A reflection of her own name, but definitely not her own. But perhaps that made it all the more accurate. She was Rose Tyler, but…not.   
  
She pursed her lips and pulled at the hem of her skirt.   
  
“Are we sure about the skirt? I know women wore trousers in the 1930s. I’ve seen pictures of Katharine Hepburn.”  
  
A shock pulsed through her fingers. She jerked her hand off the countertop and put her fingers in her mouth.  
  
“Oi! Has anyone ever told you you’re pushy?”  
  
The lights flickered on and off three times.  
  
She leaned her head back against the wall, crinkling her nose at her reflection. She wore a knee-length green skirt with a matching wrap over a sparkly gold top. Green did suit her in this body, she had to admit. It brought out the reddish tones in her otherwise brown hair and the pink in her fair, delicate skin. That’s what bothered her about his body, she thought. While her build was still athletic her skin was just a bit too…thin. Too easy to see the blood flowing underneath, the way it gathered in her cheeks and flushed her skin in moments of vulnerability.   
  
“Will I ever look in that mirror and not see a stranger looking back at me?” she asked the TARDIS, watching the way her faced moved as she practiced schooling it in an inscrutable mask.   
  
She repeated her new name in her head. She was Iris Fletcher, the Doctor’s new companion. Iris Fletcher, who was new to this life, who just met the Doctor yesterday, who was his assistant and nothing more…  
  
The TARDIS hummed and a plate of chocolate digestives appeared on her dresser. Rose caressed the wall.  
  
“Thanks, old girl,” she sighed around the crunch of a biscuit.  
  
***  
  
The Doctor circled the TARDIS console, humming softly to himself. He was going to show Iris a good time this time out. Something posh and thrilling and a bit less destructive. Even though she had assured him she planned to stay with him the night before, he still felt like he was on tenterhooks with her. Revealing your dark side to a woman you just met had that effect on a Time Lord. Or, well, at least on this Time Lord.  
  
He saw a light blinking on the console and pressed it absent-mindedly. A brash voice filled the room.  
  
“'I’ll call you every week,’ he says. Bollocks. You’re a flipping Time Lord, can’t you tell time? And I don’t care if it’s only been four days on Jupiter or some such nonsense. You’re not pulling one over on me, Sunshine.  _Call me._  “ There was a long pause. More softly, “I’m worried about you.”  
  
The Doctor winced. In all of his post-Mars angst he had forgotten entirely about his weekly phone call to Donna. He scratched the back of his neck. Part of him feared that call, feared she would sense the dark place he had been in of late. The last time she had seen anything close to that in him she had refused to travel with him. Plus, she had her own life now, with Lee. He definitely did not want to cause her unnecessary worry.  
  
He wondered vaguely if he should worry about her feeling replaced by Iris. Companions meeting one another was always such a mixed bag. He sighed, tugging his left ear.  
  
“Ready to go?” said a voice behind him.  
  
He turned and saw Iris leaning against coral pillar, a vision in a green dress.   
  
She gave a little twirl, and he felt his breathe catch in his throat. Hm, that was odd. Yet the way her eyes twinkled and that little smirk of her lips made him feel… no, surely that couldn’t be right.  
  
“You look beautiful,” he told her, holding out his arm.  
  
She took it and smiled.  
  
***  
  
“Hollywood, 1933! Helluva year!” The Doctor twirled around and began walking backwards in front of her. “The Golden Age of film is just starting to get its feet. And  _we_ , Iris Fletcher, are headed to see history in the making! Behind these doors Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert are making the very first film of the screwball comedy genre!  _It Happened One Night_  will capture the hearts of millions, sweep the Academy Awards, and introduce the cinematic landscape to farce and repartee and women with  _gumption_. Oh, you’re gonna love it!”  
  
He opened the double doors behind him, and his face fell. Inside were several rows of neatly parked, old-fashioned automobiles.  
  
“It seems I’ve brought you to a car park.”  
  
She squeezed his arm. “Probably just down the road a bit, yeah?”  
  
“Right. Yes.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Just down this way.”  
  
He placed an arm casually around her shoulders, squeezing them gently as he sauntered forward, fingers brushing over the exposed skin of her upper arm. It made her shiver. “Oh, this the best era for film! With its escapism and social commentary and pushing of the moral envelope…”  
  
“Doctor...”  
  
“…nothing can top it. Weeell…the post-surrealists of the forty-fifth century come close…”  
  
“Doctor.”  
  
“….though they’re hard to compare, really. Bit like comparing bananas flambé and a…and a chocolate balalaberry from Hawan…”  
  
“Doctor!”  
  
“What?” He pivoted on his heel to look at her.  
  
She gestured toward a large sign that read “Welcome to Pasadena” in bright red cursive.  
  
“Pasadena. Well that’s…close to Hollywood.” He sniffed. “Only fifteen miles off. Judging by the architecture I at least got the year right. We can go back to the TARDIS and make that hop. Or…oooh, we could take a train! Fancy a ride on a proper 1930s steam train, Iris?”  
  
Rose picked a newspaper from a nearby newsstand and pointed to the date. The Doctor frowned.  
  
“1923, not 1933. Okay. Well, still have been further off.” He rubbed the back of his neck, tilting his head to the side.  
  
“Wanna take a train to the 1930s?” She smirked at him, biting her lower lip to hold back a giggle.   
  
He grinned at her. “On some planets you can actually do that.”  
  
She tilted her head back and laughed, her whole body thrumming with glee. “How about on this one?”  
  
He shrugged. “Not so much. Fancy a trip to 1920s Pasadena, or should we hop back in the TARDIS and hope I do better on the second try?”  
  
She linked her arm with his, nudging him gently with her elbow. “Know the way to the nearest juice joint? I wanna get spifflicated!”  
  
He tried to give her a stern look, but the corners of his lips twitched upwards. “Don’t. Just… just don’t.”  
  
She gasped and moved her hands over her heart, arm still linked through his. “You slay me!”  
  
He bumped his hip against hers, pointing at a restaurant down the way. “I suspect there’s a place over there that’s the Real McCoy.” He gave her a dramatic wink.  
  
“Stop it.” She laughed, giving him a little shove. “Let’s go.”  
  
***  
  
After nine hundred years of time and space, the Doctor knew a thing or two about sniffing out a speakeasy. He ushered Iris into a smoky little joint in the basement of a nearby restaurant. Guiding her to a tiny table near the corner where a jazz band played “Margie,” he held out a chair for her with a grand flourish.  
  
“I’ll go get us some drinks,” he told her.  
  
He wrapped his knuckles against the mahogany bar, watching Iris out of the corner of his eye. She swayed to the music, eyes wide and gleaming as she took in the scene on the dance floor, gaze darting from one fashionable couple to another.  
  
“Your order, sir.”  
  
“Yeah, can I get a Mary Pickford and a French 75?” he asked, eyes lingering on Iris’s glowing face before turning fully to face the bartender.  
  
He did a double take. Before him, filling a cocktail shaker with rum and pineapple juice, was Ood Sigma. He looked to each side and noticed how the other patrons’ eyes slid right past the tentacled creature serving drinks. Well, at least it had the good sense to use a perception filter. He leaned forward across the bar.  
  
“What are you doing here?” he hissed.  
  
The Ood blinked.  
  
“You have ignored our summons.”  
  
“Well, your doom-saying didn’t exactly make me all that keen to get there in a hurry.”  
  
“Your song is ending soon.”  
  
“Yeah, got that, thanks.”  
  
“You should not tarry.”  
  
He looked down and swallowed. When he looked up again, the Ood had vanished, leaving two cocktails sitting neatly in its wake.  
  
***  
  
Rose watched the careful fingers of a jazz musician dance across the strings of his double bass, a bead of sweat dripping down his forehead. She smiled, body thrumming with the exhilaration of getting to experience the past again. The Doctor had taken her to the 1920s once when she travelled with him previously, but they’d gotten involved with some trouble involving the mob and some Silurians, and she never got to experience the era properly. There was a unique sort of magic that came with living days dead and gone, of seeing life played out in ways she had only heard of and seen re-enacted in films. It crept up her spine and danced down her limbs, making her shiver in delight.  
  
“Ya here alone, doll?” said a voice to her right.  
  
She turned and met the gaze of a tall, broad-shouldered man puffing on a clay pipe.  
  
“I’m here with a friend.” She nodded towards the Doctor, who was currently standing at the bar, talking to an Ood. She blinked. Did she just hallucinate an Ood? She put it from her mind.   
  
“A friend, eh?” the man asked, crossing one pinstriped leg over his opposite knee and placing an arm around her shoulders. She shrugged, but he refused to move it, instead taking to brushing his thumb back and forth over the bare skin of her arm. His touch raised the hairs on the back of her neck and caused adrenaline to surge through her limbs.  
  
“Perhaps you’d be interested in accompanying me up Mt. Wilson to see my big telescope,” he husked in her ear, breath smelling of alcohol. He placed a hand on her knee, playing with the hem of her skirt. “Let me show you some stars.”   
  
She cringed, picking up his hand and removing it from her knee. “I don’t think so.”   
  
His eyes flashed, and for a moment she could have sworn they turned golden. She shook her head, frowning.   
  
At that moment, the Doctor plopped down beside her, placing two cocktails in front of them.  
  
“Cheers,” she said, giving him a broad grin and taking a sip of the amber, fizzy drink he handed her. She grimaced and spit it out.  
  
“What  _is_  that?”  
  
The Doctor chuckled, his hand brushing gently against hers as he took the glass away from her. She focused on keeping her heart rate under control.   
  
“That’ll be the bathtub gin. I wanted you to get an  _authentic_  taste of prohibition.” He pushed a pink drink in a tall martini glass in front of her. “Here, try the Mary Pickford. The bootlegged rum is much more palatable.”  
  
“Mmmm…” she hummed, taking a sip. “That’s perfection, that is.” She smacked her lips and caught him watching her mouth. She bit her lower lip, glancing down and eyeing him sideways.  
  
“Well, I did promise you a taste of Hollywood.” He smirked, glancing at her, his cheeks tinged a slight pink.  
  
She laughed, shaking her head and catching his eye. He looked away abruptly.   
  
“Oh hello.” He turned to the tall man, as if seeing him for the first time. “I’m the Doctor.” He held out his left hand, forcing the stranger to remove his arm from her shoulder to grasp it.   
  
“Edwin Hubble.”  
  
The Doctor leaned in to place his elbow on the back of her chair. Hubble moved to return his arm to its former position, but, noticing the placement of the Doctor’s arm, pulled it back at the last minute.  
  
“Mr. Hubble was just telling me about his, erm, telescope,” said Rose.  
  
The Doctor’s eyes widened.  
  
“Hubble…as in the astronomer Hubble?”  
  
Hubble leaned back, grinning. “So you’re familiar with my work?”  
  
“Familiar with it?!...ehem…that is to say I found your dissertation on photographic evidence of faint nebulae quite…promising.”  
  
Hubble froze, eyes widening as he leaned in towards the Doctor. “I’m actually making great strides in that area with the new Hooker telescope up on Mt. Wilson. Some of my results are truly groundbreaking.”  
  
“You don’t say!” the Doctor replied. He cleared his throat. “Now, I’m just a hobbyist myself, bit of a dabbling physicist you might say, but I’d be honoured if you’d be willing to share with me what you’ve found so far.”  
  
Hubble took a long draw on his pipe, eyes raking up and down Rose’s form.  
  
“Tell you what, old chap, if you bring the lady along, I’ll show you whatever you like.”  
  
Rose wrinkled her nose, but the Doctor jumped in before she could protest.  
  
“Of course! I’m sure Iris would love to come along.”  
  
“Good. I’ll just bring my car around.” Hubble got up and headed for the door, giving Rose a smirk over his shoulder before he left the building.   
  
Rose tugged on the Doctor’s sleeve. “I’d actually rather not go with him.”  
  
“But Iris,  _Edwin Hubble_  just asked me to go look at his telescope!”  
  
“Yeah, and a few minutes ago he was trying to use that as a line to get into my knickers.”  
  
He pouted. “Well, not every woman can say a major figure in the history of science tried to pick her up.”  
  
She raised her eyebrows.  
  
“You’re right. That’s a terrible argument. But his work really is your race’s first baby steps towards realising the size and scope of the universe. He’s on the brink so showing that there are other galaxies out there, Iris! It’s living, breathing history before our very eyes!”  
  
She twisted her lips. She always had had trouble refusing him when his eyes went all large and his bottom lip stuck out just so. “Well, so long as your piece of living, breathing history keeps his hands to himself, I’m game.”  
  
He squeezed her shoulders. “Oh Iris Fletcher, you’re going to love this.”  
  
He bounded up and headed towards the door.  
  
***  
  
As they pulled into the drive of the Mt. Wilson Observatory, a tall woman in a knee-length navy dress and square frame glasses rushed out to meet them.  
  
“Dr. Hubble! I wasn’t expecting you to return until tomorrow morning,” she said, opening the door of the car and pushing her dark hair behind her ear.  
  
Hubble swept out of the vehicle, striding ahead so the woman, Rose and the Doctor had to rush to keep up.  
  
“I am bringing some friends around to show my notes on that Cepheid variable star I found a few nights ago,” he replied, opening a door to the observatory and ascending the staircase on the other side.  
  
“Yes, I need to speak to you about that,” she said. “I was looking at some of those photos we took, and I think I’ve found another in a completely separate patch of sky.” She paused. “And since when do you have friends?”  
  
Hubble scoffed. “Don’t be ridiculous, Ms. Clarke. You wouldn’t know a Cepheid variable star from a little man holding a lantern.”  
  
“I’m the Doctor,” the Doctor burst in, holding out his hand.  
  
“Alison Clarke,” the woman replied in a clipped tone, grasping the Doctor’s hand. “I’m Dr. Hubble’s assistant.”  
  
She rushed forward, then, trying to keep pace with Hubble.  
  
“I really wish you would take a look at what I’ve found, Dr. Hubble. I know you don’t think much of my intellect, but I  _am_  a graduate of Radcliffe College. I was an assistant to Henrietta Leavitt prior to her death, you know, and she worked extensively with Cepheid variable stars.”  
  
Hubble rolled his eyes. “You’d best remember your job title, Ms. Clarke. You’re here to assist me, not to natter on about your own rubbish findings.” He turned to grasp the Doctor’s elbow. “Now Doctor, you said your doctorate’s in physics, is that correct? Are you familiar with the Cepheid period-luminosity relation?”  
  
They followed Hubble down a narrow hallway to his office, the Doctor and Hubble babbling to each other about telescope technology and the implications of his observations. Alison strode just behind them, occasionally opening her mouth as if to speak, only to close it again and look down at her pumps.   
  
Rose touched Alison’s shoulder.  
  
“You should try showing what you found to the Doctor,” she said in a low voice. “I’m sure he’d love to take a look.”  
  
Alison glanced at her, giving a little laugh. “No, no. Dr. Hubble’s right. I’m only the assistant after all. I’m probably just seeing something where there’s nothing. It’s not as if I have my PhD.”  
  
Rose put a hand on Alison’s arm. “Sounds to me like you’ve found something very interesting. You seem like a smart woman, graduating from Radcliffe and all. You should give yourself the benefit of the doubt.”  
  
Alison looked at her with a wan smile. “I’m an assistant to a great scientist, nothing more. I need to learn to accept my place.”  
  
Rose’s eyes narrowed, but she could think of no reply. Alison rushed ahead, catching up to the men, but Rose hung back, sighing and picking at the fabric of her wrap.  
  
It was just a whisper at first, a tiny breath of air next her ear.  
  
“Rose.”  
  
She looked around, but saw only the Doctor, Hubble and Alison three metres ahead of her down the hallway. Biting her bottom lip, she turned down the long corridor they had just passed.  
  
“Rose.”  
  
The voice was coming from above her now. She looked up and discovered a hatch in the ceiling. When she pulled it down, a ladder descended. Pulling her sonic from her garter, she set it to torch and followed the voice onwards.  
  
“Hello, Rose.”  
  
The sonic clattered to the floor.  
  
***  
  
“Isn’t it exciting, the idea that there might be other galaxies out there?” Alison asked the Doctor as he sat in a desk chair, examining Hubble’s calculations of the distance to the Andromeda nebula, internally chuckling at some of the faulty assumptions. Talking to Hubble about astronomy was a bit like listening to a friend theorizing about the ending of a book that he had already finished. It was definitely helping to distract him from the message of a certain prophetic Ood.  
  
“Oh most definitely,” the Doctor replied, glancing at the side of the desk, where a set of photographs with a neatly written note paper clipped to the top caught his eye.  
  
“Did you see where Iris got to by any chance?” the Doctor asked, picking up the note and the photos and looking at them carefully. Oh, now that  _was_  exciting.  
  
“Who?” replied Hubble, eyes blank.  
  
The Doctor looked up, eyes narrowed. Surely, Hubble hadn’t forgotten about Iris? He had been enamoured of her enough in the speakeasy, enough so that he had made her noticeably uncomfortable. And the Doctor knew from personal experience that she was certainly not forgettable.  
  
“Are you feeling alright, Hubble?”   
  
“Yes, sorry.” Hubble shook his head. “I know this sounds…odd, but…who are you again?”  
  
“I’m the Doctor. You brought me here to look at your notes?” The Doctor pulled out his sonic and scanned him. Hmm…slight traces of cryodoxide. Now that was  _definitely_  not terrestrial.  
  
He laid a gentle hand on Hubble’s shoulder, leading him to a nearby chair and crouching down in front of him.   
  
“He’s right, Dr Hubble,” Alison jumped in. “You drove him and his friend up to the observatory yourself.”  
  
Hubble shook his head. “The last thing I remember is cleaning the mirrors on the telescope around noon.” He glanced out the small window at the night sky. “Clearly it’s been a bit of time since then.”  
  
The Doctor’s eyes narrowed even more.  
  
“Would you mind if I had a look at this telescope?”  
  
***  
  
“You aren’t real. You never existed.”  
  
The air felt hot, sticking in her throat and making her gasp for air.  
  
“Oh, you can’t deny I existed, Rose.”  
  
She gulped, closing her eyes and taking a breath to steady herself.  
  
“You plucked that image from my mind to…what? Get my attention? Well, you’ve got it.” Her voice broke. “Just tell me what you want.”  
  
“Oh, I think it’s much too late for that, Rose Tyler.”  
  
***  
  
The Doctor followed Hubble up a narrow, rickety staircase, Alison trailing just behind him. Just before the door at the top, Hubble turned abruptly, forcing the Doctor to grab the railing to catch his balance.  
  
“I’m sorry, but what exactly is going on here?”  
  
The Doctor ran his fingers through his hair. “Well, it appears you were possessed in order to lead my companion and myself up here. Actually, you were far more interested in her, now that I think of it. Hmm…” His eyes narrowed.  
  
Hubble blinked at him, and the Doctor placed his hands on his shoulders to move him gently out of the way, sweeping into the large, domed room that held the telescope. As he approached the centre of the room, a familiar figure strode out from a dark corner.  
  
She looked just like she did the last time he saw her, cheeks stained with tears on a windswept beach. She wore the very same black leather jacket, with knitted purple hand warmers obscuring all but the fingers of her beloved hands. It was as though someone lifted his memory of her straight from his mind and projected it into the room. This was is how he knew that it was definitely  _not_  her. The real Rose would not have emerged as if stepping out of the frozen moment in which he last saw her, but rather, would have changed with time.  
  
“My Doctor,” not-Rose breathed, cupping his cheek.  
  
“What are you?”  
  
“You know perfectly well who I am, Doctor.”  
  
He began to pace around her, looking her up and down. “Well, you’re a shape-shifter of some kind, that’s for certain. And given the form you’ve taken, you’re either trying to distract me, or arouse an emotion of some kind.”  
  
Not-Rose’s eyes turned dark. “You left me.”  
  
The Doctor crossed his arms over his chest. “So emotional manipulation it is then. Thank you, that narrows it down.”  
  
“What’s going on here? Who are you talking to?” Hubble’s voice came from his right, startling him.  
  
“So you can’t see her then?” Hubble shook his head. “Not surprising, actually. It would take a lot of energy to get around my psychic barriers. Taking a secondary form for you would probably be too much for it.”  
  
He heard a loud crash. “No! Please, no! I’m sorry! I’msorryI’msorryI’msorry!  _Please_ –” Iris’s voice keened from somewhere below them.  
  
He glanced down into the hole in the floor just below the telescope where he spied a large, circular reflector. He caught sight of a flash of auburn hair and a humanoid shadow rocking back and forth across its mirrored surface. So this meant there were two of them.  
  
Not-Rose stepped forward, cupping his cheeks with both hands now.  
  
“We could have been  _everything_.”  
  
His hearts ached, twisting simultaneously in… _oh_. So that was it. He glanced around him, noting all of the reflective surfaces that were a part of the giant telescope. Well, that explained a few things. It also told him how to defeat it.  
  
He wondered briefly why it hadn’t chosen the form of one of the Time Lords he had massacred in ending the Time War. Someone like Romana or Andred. Then again, though the guilt for these actions always lurked in a dark corner of his mind, he supposed he had accepted what he had done that day before he even regenerated into this form. His feelings over what happened with Rose, however, were still a fresh mark across his hearts, wide and gaping all the more since he had been on his own of late.  
  
He met not-Rose’s forehead with his own, closing his eyes and focusing inward.  
  
“I will never regret our time together,” he whispered across her lips, “no matter the pain it’s caused me since.” He took a deep breath. “I will not blame myself for being unable to accomplish the impossible. You would never have tolerated me wrapping you in cotton wool.” He swallowed then, opening his eyes to meet not-Rose’s. “And I will  _not_  regret the paths not taken. Because what we had…” His voice constricted. “What we had was  _perfect_.”  
  
Not-Rose began to shake. The Doctor stepped back, pulling Hubble with him as her skin began to fizz and spark until she exploded in a giant purple fireball.  
  
“What–what was that?” asked Alison, staring at the spot the explosion had taken place.  
  
“A culpanion. They feed on guilt, regret, that sort of thing. Live in mirrors,” he gestured at all of the reflectors on the telescope next to him. “But by forgiving myself and taking responsibility for my actions, I looped back the psychic energy they were feeding on and–BOOM!–reduced it to its essential atoms. It’s made of psychic wavelengths, so it can never really die, but I don’t imagine it’ll be able to reform for, oh, a couple million years?”  
  
“What? You’re talking nonsense, man! Gibberish!” Hubble spluttered. “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”  
  
“Oh, but isn’t it obvious?” Alison asked him. Hubble gave her a blank look. “It was an alien!”  
  
“Don’t be ridiculous, girl!”  
  
“Oh, but she’s quite right, Hubble. You ought to listen to her more often.”  
  
Just then, a scream pierced the air, chilling the Doctor to his core.  
  
“Iris!” The Doctor rushed forward, climbing the stepladder down the hole in the floor to the reflector room.  
  
He found her huddled in the corner, knees against her chest, rocking back and forth. Every few seconds, high-pitched keening noises would erupt from the back of her throat.  
  
“Iris,” the Doctor said, getting to his knees and grasping her hands. “Whatever it’s showing you isn’t real. It’s trying to evoke these emotions from you, to feed off of them. You just need to forgive yourself for whatever memory it’s trying to use against you, alright? Just forgive yourself…”  
  
But Iris continued to shake. She clutched at him, burying her nose in the crook of his neck, tears flowing freely.  
  
“I’m sorry,” she murmured so softly the Doctor would never have caught her words if not for his superior Time Lord hearing. “I’m so so sorry.”  
  
The Doctor held her, helpless and unsure of how to bring her to an emotional state to allow her to vanquish the creature that tormented her. He felt overcome by her trembling body and the salty tears staining his jacket.  
  
“Please just forgive yourself…” he whispered into her hair, clutching her closer.  
  
***   
  
Alison paced around the edge of the hole in the floor, biting her lower lip as she listened to the screams and moans coming from just beneath her. She’d just had an interesting thought. A very interesting thought. Of course, this thought could be very wrong. She glanced at Hubble, who was currently staring blankly ahead, scratching the back of his neck. He was supposed to be the brilliant one here. Surely if her idea was any good he would think of it too?  
  
Hubble’s eyes narrowed. “So let me get this straight. This–this  _thing_  was in my head?”  
  
“Well, you were acting fairly normal, other than bringing people up here, so I wouldn’t get too worked up about it.”  
  
A long silence stretched between them, punctuated only by Iris’s pained noises from below. Hubble found a chair and sat back, looking confused but unconcerned about this whole situation. She tapped her foot in agitation.  
  
“Oh for God’s sake,” said Alison, lips setting into a firm line. She stepped backward a few paces, focusing on the hole in the floor.  
  
“Wha–what are you doing?” asked Hubble.  
  
“All the work,” she replied. “As always.”  
  
She ran forward and leapt into the hole in the floor beneath the telescope.   
  
There was a loud crash as her body smashed into the reflector. Pain flared through her body as she lost her hold on consciousness.  
  
***  
  
The Doctor sighed in relief as he closed the remainder of Alison’s wounds. She slept peacefully on a cot in Hubble’s office. Breaking the mirror…he shook his head. Why did he always go for the difficult solution?  
  
“She should come to any time now,” he told Iris and Hubble as he covered Alison with a blanket.  
  
The Doctor turned his attention to his companion. She was still shaking, eyes glassy with tears.  
  
“What was that?” she asked him.  
  
“It’s called a culpanion. They feed on guilt…or, well, on regret as well. It’s a family of related emotions. Guilt, regret, shame, repentance, all equally digestible to a culpanion.”  
  
“Guilt?”  
  
He nodded. “They make their home on large, reflective surfaces. That telescope would’ve been very enticing.”   
  
She nodded in understanding, rocking back and forth and taking deep, steadying breaths.  
  
“Do you want to talk about it?” he asked, crouching in front of her and taking her hands.  
  
She bit her lip a moment, and then shook her head, wiping her eyes.  
  
He rubbed her back in slow circles.  
  
“We all have regrets, Iris. Things that twist our stomachs with guilt in the dead of night. The only thing we can do is to let go and move forward.”  
He tried to catch her eye, but she refused to look at him, shying away from his touch and staring resolutely out the window.  
  
“Then again,” he said, eyeing Hubble, “sometimes a bit of regret isn’t such a bad thing.” He strode over to the desk, grabbing the paper-clipped set of photos he had examined earlier.  
  
He took a seat next to Alison’s cot, noting that she was now watching him with alert eyes, having woken up at some point since he had initially left her side. He moved his chair to face Hubble, leaning forward.  
  
“I’d have a look at these, if I were you,” he told Hubble, handing him the photographs. “I think you’ll find your assistant has discovered a second galaxy in addition to Andromeda.”  
  
Hubble’s eyes widened. “So you think my calculations are correct? That I’ve actually found another galaxy?”  
  
The Doctor chuckled and rolled his eyes. “If you had been paying attention properly you would know that I just told you that  _Alison_  discovered a  _second_ galaxy, which I would think would quite help your argument that the Milky Way is not alone, wouldn’t you agree?”  
  
Hubble glanced at Alison, nodding, lips pursed.  
  
“And this one doesn’t even have a name yet!” the Doctor continued. “This isn’t just some nebula you’re redefining as a galaxy, but an entirely new cluster of stars. Might I suggest calling it Alison? A good name for a galaxy, wouldn’t you agree? Rolls off the tongue quite nicely.” He glanced at Alison, the corners of his lips twitching upwards.  
  
Hubble cleared his throat. “I perhaps would benefit from giving more credence to her observations.” He crossed his arms across his chest. “But you must acknowledge that she’s just an assistant, Doctor. After the trouble yours got into today, surely you can recognise that they can get in over their heads.”  
  
The Doctor scoffed. “First, I will not have anyone calling Iris my assistant. As it stands, she’s saved my life more times than I’ve had to save hers. And I’d like to point out that she was the first to discover that something was amiss here, even if she was unable to fight it off on her own. “  
  
He looked over at Iris with a soft smile, only to see her staring off into the distance, eyes glassy and narrowed.  
  
“And I won’t be anyone’s assistant any longer,” Alison broke in. “You can consider this my resignation, Hubble.”  
  
“I–what?!” Hubble gaped at her, eyes wide.  
  
“What did you do in the middle of that crisis, today, hm?” Alison got up from the cot and strode over to Hubble, arms crossed and eyes blazing. “You just sat there like a loon, while I was actually thinking up a solution! You may be a brilliant man, but it’s time for me to stop believing that I am lesser to anyone.”  
  
She turned to the Doctor, then.  
  
“I’m a scientist in my own right, and I need to own up to that. Find somewhere where I can actually make an impact. Maybe I’ll try to get my doctorate. Who knows? But this is me, taking ownership of my life and moving forward.”   
  
She stuck out her hand for the Doctor to shake.  
  
He grinned at her and grasped her hand. “Oh, look at you, Alison Clarke. You’re gonna be brilliant.”  
  
She smirked. “I think, just maybe, I already am.”  
  
***  
  
Rose shivered and pulled her wrap more firmly against her as she walked back to the TARDIS with the Doctor. She caught him sneaking glances at her, but she refused to meet them. The sooner they could move on to a new adventure, the better.  
  
“Are you sure you’re alright?”  
  
“Mhmm…” She took a shuddering breath.  
  
He put an arm around her, pulling her around to face him and rubbing her upper arms gently with his thumbs. She looked down. She couldn’t look him in the eye. Not now…not after…  
  
“Hey, are you sure you don’t want to talk about it?”  
  
Her bottom lip trembled and a tear leaked out of her right eye. She brushed it away and moved away from him, walking forward at a brisk pace, arms crossed tightly against her chest. She was supposed to be a new woman. She’d even given herself a new name. So why, oh why, did her problems insist on following her into her second life?  
  
Suddenly, he was at her side once more.  
  
“Iris…”  
  
She rounded on him. “Can you please respect that this is something I don’t wish to discuss?”  
  
His eyes widened. “Of course. Whatever you prefer.”  
  
She nodded and strode into the TARDIS, slamming the door behind her.   
  
***  
  
The Doctor paced around the console flipping his phone between his fingers as he guided the TARDIS into flight. There was no avoiding it anymore. He needed advice. Taking a deep breath, he pressed one on his speed dial.   
  
“Run into some trouble, Spaceman? It’s been fifteen whole days since you’ve called.  _Fifteen_  days! We agreed that you call every week. If. You. Recall.”  
  
He winced.  
  
“Hello to you too, Donna.”  
  
“We synced my mobile to TARDIS time for a reason, Doctor. So I wouldn’t have to bloody worry about you all the time.”  
  
The Doctor ducked his head, wincing. “I’m sorry.” He paused. “The last couple weeks have been…eventful.”  
  
“What happened this time? Tick off Ivan the Terrible? Get captured whilst overthrowing a megalomaniac on Mars?”  
  
“Donna, you very well know that by the time Mars is permanently settled in 2170 it becomes a peaceful colony for Buddhist monks and stays that way until the Sun explodes in the year 5 billion. Monks are quite good at avoiding issues with megalomania. Weeeeell…I suppose there  _were_  the Ice Warriors on the planet in ancient times, had a spot of trouble with them when I was younger. Rather fascinating, Ice Warriors, their story really is an archetype for dying civilizations universe-wide, if you think about it…”  
  
“Doctor. You’re babbling. And very clearly avoiding answering my question. What is it you’re afraid to tell me?” He imagined that if she were present he’d be getting a rather stern glare.  
  
“I…ehm…well, that is to say… _Igotanewcompanion_.” He swallowed. Better to admit that than what he actually encountered on Mars.  
  
“Didn’t quite catch that last bit, Doctor.” He felt a bit heartened by the fact that he could detect a hint of a smile in her voice.  
  
He cleared his throat and forced himself to speak slowly.  
  
“I got a new companion.”  
  
“Finally. I thought I was going to have to start inviting nice ladies over for tea whenever you came ‘round.” He definitely heard the smile in her voice this time.  
  
“So…you’re not mad then?”  
  
“What do you take me for? Some jealous harpy who won’t let you have other friends? I told you the first time we met that you need someone travelling with you, you dumbo!”  
  
“Yes, well…ehem… that was before...”  
  
“So, what’s her name? What’s she like?” she asked.  
  
“Her name is Iris Fletcher. And she’s…well, I don’t know what to make of her, really.”  
  
“Sounds like just your type.”  
  
“My  _type_? I don’t have a  _type_ , Donna.”  
  
“You need someone who can throw you off kilter a bit. Someone who challenges you.”  
  
“Well, I suppose she fits that description.”  
  
There was a pause. “So, is she pretty?”  
  
“I don’t see how that matters, but…ehm….well, I suppose her features have a certain symmetry that most species tend to find appealing when judging attractiveness.” He sniffed.  
  
“Ha! According to my Doctor-to-Donna dictionary that means she’s flipping  _gorgeous_. I’ve seen pictures of your former companions. You do tend to go for the sort who could moonlight as supermodels.”  
  
“We’re  _not_  having this conversation, Donna. You know very well that my relationships with my companions are strictly platonic.” He rubbed the back of his neck and looked distractedly up at the ceiling.  
  
“Dare I mention—?”  
  
“Rose was a rare exception in what has been nearly a millennium of travelling time and space.”   
  
“Oh come off it. I seriously doubt that you’ve only been in love once in nine hundred years.”  
  
The Doctor was silent for a long moment, studying his trainers.  
  
“There are kinds and degrees of that emotion, Donna, and I’ve felt it for all of my companions in one form or another,” he said at long last.  
  
Donna was quiet a moment, and the Doctor could sense her struggling over whether to push this line of questioning.  
  
“You can’t play the grieving widower forever, Doctor. There comes a point where you need to move on.”  
  
He let out a breath and rubbed his temples. “Donna, when you’re a member of a species as long-lived as mine, six years is the blink of an eye. Plus, Time Lords, we’re quite….stalwart in our emotions.” He cleared his throat. “It takes a regeneration to bring about any real change in us, though even then, if it’s central enough to who you are…”  
  
Donna paused. “Well, Iris must be brilliant if you’ve finally decided to take someone aboard after all this time.”  
  
The Doctor let out a breath, relieved Donna wasn’t going to push this anymore.  
  
“She is,” he replied softly, ducking his head a moment. “I’m a bit worried about her, though.”  
  
“Why’s that?”  
  
“There was an…incident. I’ve been travelling with you lot a long time. You need to talk about things when you’ve experienced something traumatic. But she just…shuts me out.” He rubbed the back of his neck, leaning back on the jump seat.  
  
“Bit rich coming from you, isn’t it?”  
  
“I–wha–Donna, what‘s that supposed to mean?”  
  
Donna snorted. “Well, it’s not like you’re the most forthcoming bloke, now are you? Have to pry any information about your past out of you. I mean, I get it. Living the life you lead there would be some things I wouldn’t care to relive either. But maybe it’s the same for her. You have to respect there might be some things she prefers not to talk about, yeah?”  
  
He ran his fingers through his hair. “I…yes. Yes, I suppose so. I just…I…” He gulped and took a breath. “I hate to see her in pain.”  
  
“She’ll be okay, Spaceman.”  
  
He ducked his head and nodded.  
  
***  
  
Rose hesitated just outside the console room the next morning. She didn’t think the Doctor would hold last night against her, but…she sighed. She hoped she could make him let it go. She didn't need her old ghosts holding her back from this new life she was forming with him.  
  
“I shouldn’t have snapped at you last night,” she told his back.  
  
He spun around, eyes wide. “No…no, I shouldn’t have pushed you, Iris. It was unfair of me.”  
  
She shook her head. “Water under the bridge.”  
  
He nodded, pulling his ear. “Good.”   
  
“Good.”  
  
“Good.”  
  
They stared at each other a long moment. The Doctor stood perfectly still, eyes large as he watched her every move.  
  
Rose stepped forward, grabbing his hand. “I’m thinking today’s the perfect day for a proper adventure.” She held out a trainer-clad foot. “These feet are just itching to run for my life.” She tilted her head, biting her lip and looking up at him. “You up for some world-saving, Doctor?”  
  
His face broke into a wide grin, and he swept her up in a hug, twirling her around before setting her down, keeping his hands on her waist.  
  
“Always, Iris Fletcher,” he replied, her heart twinging at the pseudonym. “Always.”


	5. Recalled

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this chapter was getting too long, so it's going to be two parts! Also, many thanks to the lovely veritascara for betaing this for me.

The plastic of two heavy Sainsbury’s bags dug into the palms of Martha’s hands as she entered the takeaway restaurant around the corner from her flat.

“A veggie burger and chips, please, and hold the gherkins,” she told the man behind the register, pulling a five-pound note from her pocketbook and sliding it across the counter.

As he handed her her change, the telly at the back of the shop caught her eye.  A brunette woman reporting for the BBC stood in front of the Houses of Parliament, “RE-EDUCATION ACT PASSED” in bold letters across the bottom of the screen.

“Under pressure from the growing anti-intellectual movement that has swept the nation in the past two weeks, Parliament has just passed a new law that supports the wholesale defunding of the current education system in favour of a new training program that will focus on what supporters deem the ‘productive trades’ of agriculture, forestry and mining.  Implementation of the new system will begin as soon as Monday, say officials from the Department of Education…”

Martha put down her shopping and rifled through her handbag for her mobile. Flipping it open, she dialled with shaking fingers.

“Captain?” she asked.  “This is Dr. Martha Jones.  Have you seen the news?”

“Martha, I regret to inform you that just because Parliament makes decisions that you don’t support, it doesn’t mean there are aliens involved.  I’ve come to expect more common sense from you.”

“But it just doesn’t make sense!  No logical, educated person would support this.  It’s just this random idea people have suddenly got in their heads.  It’s like they’re all being controlled by, like, some kind of mind control network or something.”

“I’ll have you know, Martha, that I happen to be a firm supporter of the National Re-education Act.  Are you suggesting that I am illogical and uneducated?”

“No, ma’am.”  Martha leaned her head back in frustration.  “Sorry for wasting your time.”

She ended the call and tapped her phone against her lips.  She eyed the television screen, where the reporter was interviewing an esteemed barrister, who was giving up his position at an elite London firm to take up coal mining in South Wales. 

“Your order, ma’am,” said a man behind the counter, shaking her from her reverie.  She quickly dialled a number and wedged her phone between her ear and her shoulder as she grabbed her order and her grocery bags, heading out of the shop.

An automated answerphone picked up.  “Doctor, it’s Martha.  There’s something…there’s something I think you should check out.”

She shifted her bags between her hands so she could hang up her phone and put it in her handbag.  Exhaling a heavy sigh, she turned down an empty alleyway, heading back towards her flat.

A wheezing noise filled the air, and Martha’s groceries slipped from her hands and tumbled this way and that across the cobblestones as a familiar police box materialised in the alleyway.

A woman with reddish-brown hair in a green leather jacket poked her head out the TARDIS, a delighted grin spreading across her face as her eyes landed on Martha.   For a split second, Martha wondered if the Doctor had regenerated into a woman. 

“Oh no,” the woman said, bounding out of the TARDIS and bending over to pick up a pair of now-bruised apples.  “We’ll go to the shops later and replace all this for you, won’t we, Doctor?”

Martha followed the woman’s gaze to see the Doctor leaning against the TARDIS, long brown coat billowing slightly behind him in the breeze.

“Of course,” he replied.  “Martha Jones, Iris Fletcher.  Iris Fletcher, Martha Jones.”  He nodded between the two women.

Iris held out her hand, and Martha grasped it.  The other woman grinned at her, and Martha felt herself returning the expression, worries just a bit lightened by the brightness of Iris’s smile.

“So how long have you been travelling with the Doctor?” Martha asked.

“Oh, about three weeks now, I think?” Iris examined a carton of eggs, finding only three broken ones, and putting it back in the bag.

“We just got back from the Sky Markets of Cheem when we got your message,” the Doctor added.  “Did I ever take you there? Incredible views! And the street performers have been voted best in the Virgo Cluster two hundred years running.”

“They have this music, yeah?” said Iris, excitement gleaming in her eyes. “It simulates touch. They’ll play an aria, and it’ll feel like it’s literally blowing past your skin.” She gave the Doctor a smile over her shoulder.

The Doctor beamed down at her, eyes locked with hers.  “Auroplasia. Decidedly difficult to master, but oh, when it’s done right…magic!”

Iris stood up, bag of Martha’s groceries in hand. “Oh! And there was that one…” She swatted at his arm, making odd circular gestures with her other hand.

“Oh! Yes, yes! With the…” He put his hands next to his head, wriggling his forefingers.

“Clydaho!” Iris exclaimed. “That was his name. Lovely fellow.  Beautiful family. He could sing the taste of chocolate straight onto my tongue!”

“I tried to get him to do banana, but he really didn’t have the technique down, eugh…” He grimaced.

Iris wrinkled her nose. “Much too acidic,” she agreed. “You should’ve tried the pear. It was divine.”

“Iris! Don’t even  _joke_  about such things!”

Martha shook her head.  How could they have only been together for only three weeks? She cleared her throat, and they finally seemed to remember that she was still there.

“Why don’t we all head up to your flat, and you can tell us what’s going on over a nice cuppa, hmm?” said the Doctor, giving her a chummy hug.

“That sounds lovely.”

Iris grabbed the Doctor’s hand, leaning into his side as they walked towards Martha’s flat.  He looked down at her, a soft look in his eyes.  Were they…?  But no, this was the Doctor. Martha shook her head.  She knew better than anyone interpreting his signals like a normal human male’s was a fruitless endeavour.  She glanced at Iris’s face, which was beaming up at the Doctor with wide, adoring eyes.  Perhaps she’d best remind his new friend of that as well.

* * *

 

As Martha headed straight for the kitchen, the Doctor made a beeline for the couch, dragging Rose with him by the hand.  He plopped down, propping his feet up on the coffee table and grabbing a rag mag to peruse.  She sat down close to him, letting their thighs brush.

“Pffftt…” said the Doctor, leaning into her side as he pointed to a page devoted to photos of Tom Cruise jumping up on various pieces of furniture.  “I wonder when he’ll finally give up the act.  He’s not doing a very good job at posing as human. His species has always been bad at doing all of the necessary research to blend in with the local culture.”

Rose opened her mouth to agree, an anecdote about the time they tried in vain to convince him that the Thetans didn’t actually harm their hosts on this planet on the tip of her tongue, before remembering that “Iris” wouldn’t be aware of that particular information. 

“Hmm…” she replied instead, leaning back to take a look around the room.

There was no hiding the fact that Martha had spent a great amount of time traveling with the Doctor.  Among various framed photographs of people Rose didn’t know stood a picture of the Doctor and Martha standing in front of the melting ice façade of the Grand Temple on the Fourth Moon of Plintek.  A pair of blue rozenflowers commonly sold at one of the Doctor’s favourite asteroid markets sat on the windowsill.  Rose even spied a set of medical texts with the sort of holographic illustrations typical of the fifty-first century sitting on the bookshelf.

She had found herself increasingly wrapped up in their old rhythms over the past weeks, and it was easy to pretend to be the Doctor and Rose Tyler as they were before parallel universes and regeneration got in the way.  But now, as happy as she was to meet Martha—she was terribly grateful that he’d had someone, at least for a time, in her absence—she was unnerved by this tangible evidence of their separation.  It reminded her that she was no longer that woman anymore, changed as she had been by the intervening year.

 “All I have is that tea I picked up at that market on Flavin V,” Martha called to her guests from the kitchen.  “I got hooked on coffee in med school, but I’ll still have some of this stuff if I want something light on caffeine in the evenings.  It’s very soothing.”

“Sounds perfect,” Rose replied, watching the Doctor as he picked up a banana from the bowl of fruit on the table, putting his feet up and making himself at home. 

“So it all started about two weeks ago,” Martha began, as she re-entered the room, carrying a tea tray. “There was this sudden mass movement that sprung up.  Anti-intellectuals, they called themselves.  Claimed to be against all ‘office-based’ careers.  They want us to go back to before the Industrial Revolution, when it comes down to it.  This wouldn’t faze me if this was just a few fringe sorts who managed to gather a bit of steam, but overnight seventy percent of the country is spouting this nonsense.  And now Parliament’s even got behind it!  But no one at UNIT is willing to look into it.  They just think I’m paranoid.”

The Doctor took a sip of his tea. "Anything particularly suggestive of alien involvement?"

Martha thought a moment.  "I have this friend from med school, yeah? Brilliant woman, wanted to be a doctor her whole life. Loved her job. We’re catching up over lunch when suddenly she gets this glassy look in her eye and tells me she’s donating everything she owns and moving to the Forest of Dean to be a lumber cutter.  It’s the same story all across Britain.  People uprooting their lives and leaving jobs they love to be farmers or miners or foresters, when they never had any interest in such things before. I saw on the news just the other day fifty stockbrokers just up and left in the middle of the workday, no notice, no reason other than they suddenly got the notion in their heads.  There's something alien going on here.  I know it."

Rose narrowed her eyes.  “Have you been in touch with Torchwood at all?”

Martha blinked. “I called Jack, and he brushed it off.  Only people that seem to believe me are one fellow medical officer and this young lieutenant I talk to sometimes.  There’s the other thirty percent of the nation that’s not going along with all this, of course, but they wouldn’t be inclined to think it’s because of aliens, would they?”

Rose leaned back in her chair.  “I can’t believe that Jack would ignore something this obvious.  He must be under the control of whatever it is that’s causing this.”  She tapped her lips with her forefinger.  “I worked for Torchwood before I took off with this one,” she answered Martha’s questioning look.

“Ah, that would explain a lot,” Martha replied.  “Do you think it’s something like the Archangel Network, Doctor?  That’s the closest thing I’ve seen to mind control on this scale.”

“Nah,” the Doctor replied, crumbs getting all over Martha’s sofa as he bit into a scone.  “That died with the Master.  Could be a lot of things really.  Might not even be intentional.  Peaceable aliens might’ve accidentally imported a kind of pollen that makes people want to work with their hands.  Who knows?”

“But could something like that really produce something of this scale?” Rose asked.  “I feel like the fact that people are being directed towards extracting Britain’s resources is a major clue.  It implies motive.”

“You think we’re looking for some kind of alien imperialist?” Martha asked.

“That’s not a bad idea,” said the Doctor, frowning.  “It gives us a starting place for our search, anyhow.  We should probably check the Torchwood and UNIT databases for anything suspicious.”

“There’s a staff meeting at UNIT I need to be at in half an hour,” said Martha.  “You should come.  Good chance for you to question the other officers.”

* * *

 

“Captain Magambo, Lieutenant Fields, Officer Avery,” Martha saluted the three uniformed officers that met them at the door of the UNIT conference room, the Doctor and Iris trailing just behind her.

“Doctor!” Captain Magambo jumped to attention, her companions following suit seconds later.

“Oh, don’t salute,” he waved them aside, striding into the room, flopping into a chair, and putting his heels on the table.  Iris followed behind him, taking a seat to his right, crossing her arms against her chest.

“Well, come on in then,” Iris said to the group congregated by the door, who were watching the Doctor with wide eyes. Martha grinned and found a seat on the Doctor’s other side, but the other three refused to budge.

“I regret that I can’t allow your assistant to sit in on this meeting, Doctor,” said Captain Magambo, nodding towards Iris.  “She doesn’t have clearance.”

“She can go help my assistant sort the afternoon post, if she needs something to do,” added Lieutenant Fields, eyes lingering pointedly on her chest.

Iris opened her mouth as if to protest, but then closed it again, biting her lower lip.  The Doctor narrowed his eyes.  That was odd.  She was usually the first to stand up for herself.  Gave the King of Sambasa VI a stern lecture just last week.

“She goes, or I go,” he told them, giving his best Oncoming Storm glare. “And trust me, you  _really_ don’t want me to go.”

The officers looked at each other.  After a pause, Captain Magambo gave a brief nod and strode to the front of the room.

Soon, two other officers entered, carrying paper cups of coffee, and taking seats next to Martha.  She introduced the burly ginger one to her left as Winters and the other, a tall, Middle-Eastern man, as Bishara.

Captain Magambo started the meeting, jumping into bureaucratic stuff and bother for a few minutes before Bishara interrupted her, slamming his hand on the table.

“Are we ever going to address the elephant in the room here? As we speak, out country’s most talented are abandoning their successful careers because somehow they got the idea that they’re not productive? Are we not even going to entertain the notion that they might be possessed by aliens?!”

Avery cleared his throat, setting down his teacup. “While I accept that there are those among us who are pro-intellects, I would very much appreciate it if they kept their political views to themselves while in the workplace and not insult those of us with a different ideology.”

Winters rose to his feet, the legs of his chair scraping loudly against the floor. “You’re just too goddamn arrogant to admit that something alien might be influencing your thoughts! Good God, man!  Can you stop a minute and accept that you might not be infallible?”

“Sit  _down_ , Officer Winters.” Lieutenant Fields rolled his eyes. “If we all threw such a histrionic fit every time Parliament did something we didn’t like, we’d never get any work done.”

“Excuse me,” Iris burst in, irate. “Did it ever occur to you that the Doctor and I wouldn’t be here at all if we didn’t think this was something worth pursuing?”

“Well, I don’t rightly care what  _you_  think,” replied Fields. “I’ve read that one’s file.” He nodded towards the Doctor. “He mostly just picks you lot off the street and brings you along to fawn over him, while he causes more trouble than he solves.  Where’d he find you, anyway? Primark?”

Iris squared her shoulders. “Henrik’s, actually.  I was half off.”

The Doctor bit back a laugh.  He wasn’t sure why she didn’t just tell the man she used to be a Torchwood agent, though he presumed that she had her reasons. 

Captain Magambo cleared her throat. “I think it would be appropriate to abandon this topic for now. Should better evidence of what you suggest arise, I would be willing to revisit it.”

She glanced at the Doctor, swallowing.  He sat back, rolling his eyes.  Always with the subtle sucking up.

Captain Magambo then proceeded in what, in the Doctor’s opinion, was a brilliant imitation of the teacher from the Charlie Brown cartoon. He should really take Iris to meet Charles Schultz.  She would like that.  And he would bet a pretty penny that Charles would find her absolutely inspirational. He eyed her out of the corner of his eye, watching her foot tap under the table, restless as he to get investigating.

He ran his fingers through his hair, looking up at the ceiling. Perhaps if he was going to take her to see Charles Schultz, they should make a whole trip to the fifties.  Dress up, see Elvis, the whole bit.  An image of Rose, bright and laughing in a pink dress flashed through his mind. He froze.

He couldn’t ignore how much his burgeoning friendship with Iris felt so similar to his connection with Rose.  Her bravery, her lust for adventure, her compassion, her need to seek out every planet’s equivalent of chips…though Iris preferred them dipped in mayonnaise rather than doused in vinegar.  It was probably just that she was…what was that word Donna had used? Oh yes,  _type_. She was his type.  There was just a certain type of person who was well-suited to his personality in this regeneration, and both Iris and Rose fit that mould perfectly. That had to be it.  Still, it unnerved him.

The Doctor felt something nudge against his foot and glanced to his right.  Iris was looking at him, lower lip caught between her teeth and eyes wide and mischievous.  She glanced down at the legal pad sitting on the table in front of her, and he followed her gaze, reading the sentence she had written there.

_Bet you a tenner I can end this meeting in under five minutes._

He raised his eyebrows, doing his best to prevent his mirth from shining across his face.  Oh, she was brilliant.  He grabbed his pen and wrote two words on his own legal pad.

 _You’re on_.

She put the heels of her trainers on the table, pulling out her mobile and making a show of paying it more attention than the Captain’s briefing.  Several officers side-eyed her, shooting glares her way.  Captain Magambo appeared unperturbed by her actions, drawing the room’s attention to a particular location on a map projected on the screen behind her, droning without pause for three minutes.

“…These radiation readings in Chelsea are of particular concern.  They exceed natural background levels by 500 percent.  The readings come from underneath the home of an upstanding citizen who passes our background checks with flying colours, so we’ve no reason to suspect any foul play on his part. Our primary suspect would be the Slitheen, who have already shown an interest in radioactive material for powering their ships.  However, we can’t rule out another race that we’ve had yet to encounter.”

“Have we considered that maybe there’s just a huge uranium deposit in the area, we’ve just never picked up on before?” asked Lieutenant Fields, leaning back and resting his teacup on his large protruding stomach. 

The Captain pursed her lips, shifting her weight between her feet.  “I think we can rule that out, Bob.”

Iris gave a loud snort. The whole room turned to stare at her.

“Something amusing to you, Ms. Fletcher?”

She looked up from her phone, as though noticing for the first time there were other people in the room.

“Oh!  Sorry!  Just hacking billionaires’ bank accounts.  It’s  _such_ a laugh.  The things they think to purchase!  I mean, you should see this guy’s Amazon order.  But you were discussing that radiation problem, weren’t you?  Well, I’ll throw a theory out there.   _I_ this it’s a megalomaniac building a machine that will give him immortality.”

The room twittered.  The Captain bit her lower lip, looking down for several long moments.  “I don’t see any evidence of that, Ms. Fletcher.”

Iris crossed her arms.  “Well, it was better than Bob’s idea.” 

Winters let out a chuckle, and the Doctor spied Martha and Avery trying to keep straight faces.  Even Captain Magambo’s lips twitched before she took a rather telling sip of tea.

“But seriously,” Iris said, strolling to the front of the room and handing her mobile to Captain Magambo.  “If you actually bothered to properly investigate the upstanding rich guy who lives on top of massive radiation readings, you’d discover that one Mr. Joshua Naismith is the author of  _Fighting the Future_ , an autobiography in which he displays an unusual level of fascination with medical technology concerned with extending the human lifespan.  Hacking his bank account, I found that he recently paid $80 million to one Mr. Allen Atherton, a known dealer of scavenged alien tech.  Checking Torchwood Three’s archive of tech gone missing with the fall of Torchwood One, I found the most likely candidate to be this device, a cellular regenerator powered by a Nuclear Bolt, nicknamed the Immortality Gate.”

The silence was palpable.  The Doctor found himself grinning like an idiot as he watched her in front of the room, hands on her hips as the UNIT officers that had underestimated her earlier stared at her, jaws gaping.  At last, Captain Magambo reached for her mobile.

“Officer Montgomery, we need a team to search the home of Mr. Joshua Naismith, and bring Mr. Naismith in for questioning.  Thank you.”

“Well,” said the Doctor, slapping the table. “We done here?”

The Captain cleared her throat. “Yes.”

Iris bounded over to him and held out her hand. “What’d I tell, ya?”

Instead of handing over the money, he merely linked his fingers with hers, swinging their clasped hands between them, warmth spreading through him with the contact.

“How about I just buy you lunch?”

She beamed, nudging his shoulder with hers. “Deal.”

* * *

After setting up a program to scan UNIT monitoring systems under their search parameters, Rose, the Doctor and Martha headed for the canteen.  Rose took a seat at a table, watching the Doctor as he headed to the counter to fetch them some chips.

“He’s easy to fall in love with, isn’t he?” said a voice to her right.

Rose turned her head to stare at Martha.  “I—what?”

Martha smiled, ducking her head. “I know that look I see in your eyes when you look at him.  Reckon it’s the same one I used to get in mine once upon a time.”

Rose narrowed her eyes.  “You were in love with him?”

Martha nodded.  “Man who looks like that saves the world, kisses me, and offers to show me all of time and space?  How could I not?  He makes it so easy.”

Rose gnawed her lower lip. “He kissed you?”

Martha chuckled. “According to him it was just a ‘genetic transfer.’ Needed to slow up a Judoon with a bioscanner looking for nonhumans. Because that’s the thing, really.  He’s not human. What we think of as flirting is really just him being…him.” She paused a long moment.

“All ancient history now, in any case.” She tapped a gold ring on her finger. “Tom and I have been married a year. Turns out requited love is a lot more fulfilling.  He’s off treating orphans in Rwanda right now, but he’ll be home again soon.”

Rose smiled, her tension receding a bit.

Martha hesitated a moment, glancing down at her nails before asking, “Does he still talk about Rose all the time?”

Rose blinked. He used to talk about her?

Martha’s lips twitched.  “From the blank look on your face, I’d say no.  Must be finally getting over her, then.  Couldn’t stop talking about her when I travelled with him.  Gave me a bit of an inferiority complex, it did.  It was always ‘Rose would know what to do here.’” Martha shook her head, looking back over at the Doctor.

“Oh?” said Rose, picking at a hangnail.

“Yeah.  Don’t know much about her, really.  Just that they were together and that she got trapped in a parallel universe during the Battle of Canary Wharf.  Oh, and that she’s somehow the reason that Jack Harkness is immortal.”

“And he said that they were  _together_?”

“One of the first things he said to me when I first came aboard the TARDIS.  I should have taken the hint that he was still mourning her. But I thought that if I just gave him some time and proved myself to him, that one day he would just open his eyes and there we’d be.” Martha glanced down at the table, smiling weakly to herself.

Rose’s mind reeled.  Had he really thought…?  All that time she had convinced herself that what she felt was one-sided, that he would not have wasted precious time after her confession on that beach, had he really felt the same.  Of course, Martha might be mistaken.  Knowing the Doctor, he had probably meant “together” in the most literal sense of the word.

 “Why’d you finally leave him?” she asked at long last.

Martha sighed.  “Wasn’t easy.  I loved it, seeing new worlds, really helping people who needed it.  But it got to a point where my family got caught up in it. And I knew I needed to get out—for them and for me. Because not only was I spending my life trying to needlessly prove myself to a man who would never love me back, but I was living a lifestyle I’m not sure any human can take in the long term.  That life…it hurts people.  Changes them.”

Rose looked away as her mother’s words from long ago echoed through her mind.  _You’ll keep changing.  And in forty years time, fifty, there’ll be this woman, this strange woman, walking through the marketplace on some planet a billion miles from Earth.  She’s not Rose Tyler.  Not anymore.  She’s not even human._

And she had changed. Quite literally, she was a new woman. A non-human woman, for human women didn’t sense the flow of time or wake up in new bodies when they died. For first time in a year she was forced to entertain the notion that the Doctor may have loved her back then.  At least he had thought of them as “together,” whatever that meant.  But did that even matter in the face of this important fact?  The Doctor may have loved Rose Tyler, human as she was, but she had no reason to believe that he felt, or even could feel, more than friendship with the battle-hardened alien she was now.

* * *

 

After lunch, the Doctor, Iris and Martha set to work set about sifting through the results of their search of the UNIT database, trying desperately to find a clue.

“Do you have family you’d like to go visit while we’re back on Earth?” Martha asked Iris, as she scrolled through dozens of dead ends.  Out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of the Doctor turning his head to watch Iris’s expression.

 “They’re…dead,”  Iris winced, biting her lower lip and looking askance.

“Friends, then?  You must have someone who cares about where you’ve been.”

 “I lived with Jack before I took off with the Doctor.” She shrugged. Martha spied the Doctor grip the table top a bit more tightly.  “I suppose I had a good professional relationship with the rest of the team at Torchwood, but they can just ask Jack if they care to know why I left.”

“So were you and Jack…?”

“No, not at all.” She shook her head, giggling to herself.  The Doctor’s posture loosened, just slightly.

Martha laughed.  “Sorry.  It’s just that you said you lived with him, and knowing Jack…”

Iris rolled her eyes. “If I was any other person living in that close proximity with him I’m sure something  _would_ have happened.  But I was…with someone when we first met, and after that ended, well, I was never really in a place emotionally where I could have even done anything casual.  And Jack’s always understood that.  He’s become a bit like a brother to me, actually.”

“So, how’d you even get involved with Torchwood, then?”

There was a long pause.

“I’m gonna go grab some tea,” Iris said, finally.  She turned on her heel and left the room.

Martha smiled, shaking her head.

“What?” the Doctor asked her.

“Nothing,” she replied. “Just that she’s a lot like you.”

The Doctor scratched that back of his neck.  “Some ways, I think she’s a bit beyond me, actually.”

Martha laughed.  “Iris and her companion, the Doctor?” she teased.

He grinned. “I wouldn’t say it if it weren’t true. Most people take a bit of time before they really adapt to my way of life. But she…she acts like she’s been doing this for years.  Comes from being a Torchwood agent, I suppose.”

“That’s the thing, though, isn’t it?  She doesn’t seem to like, share much, does she?  About her life before she met you, I mean. She might actually be more inscrutable than you are.”

The Doctor hummed. “Drives me mad, sometimes, to tell the truth.  There’s definitely something that happened to her, in her past, that she’s running from.  I’ve learned not to press her on it.  She gets…” He shook his head.

“You know, a little reciprocity can go a long way.  Sometimes it only takes sharing a bit of yourself to get a person to open up.”

The Doctor blinked. “Right.”  He ducked his head, turning his full attention back to the computer monitor.

* * *

Rose took a sip of her tea and crinkled her nose, spitting it back out again.  There was decidedly something…off about it.  The formulation had definitely changed since she’d last had this brand a month ago.  A thought hit her.  She grabbed a few extra teabags, rushing over to where the Doctor and Martha were running their scans.

“Martha, can I borrow your laptop a moment?” she asked.

Martha glanced over at her, before returning to monitoring the scans. “Sure.”

A quick search found her exactly what she was looking for.  “Both of you, come look at this.”

“Consolidation of the British Tea Industry?” the Doctor read from behind her.

Rose nodded. “This says that all five British tea companies merged to form the British Tea Conglomerate three weeks ago.  There was a brief outcry, then nothing.  Doesn’t that strike you as odd?”

Martha narrowed her eyes.  “There should be some kind of legal action.  That definitely violates competition law.”

“It looks like they were going to contest it, then…nothing.”

“You think the control agent is in the tea?” the Doctor asked.

“What better way to put the British population under your spell than to contaminate the national drink?” Rose replied. “Plus, think about it. In that meeting, only the people who argued in favour of the Reeducation Act were drinking tea.  Could be a coincidence, but I don’t think so.”

The Doctor picked up one of the teabags she had brought over, opening the packaging and giving it a long sniff.  He crinkled his nose.

“Namo,” the Doctor said, making a popping noise with his lips at the end of the word.

“What’s that?” asked Martha.

“It’s a stimulant popular in some systems.  It’s known for having the annoying side-effect of making one easily suggestible.”

“What, so like someone brings up the idea of giving up industrial society, and the idea spreads like wildfire?”

“Exactly,” the Doctor replied, grinning. “Looks like  _we_  need to go investigate a tea company.”


	6. Recharged

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry various life things have kept me from writing over the past couple months. Chapters should be much more frequent now. I promise.
> 
> Beta: veritascara

The Doctor linked his arm through Iris’s as they entered the reception area of the British Tea Company, Martha keeping pace on his other side.  He approached the front desk, flashing the receptionist the psychic paper.  

“Someone will be right out to speak with you, Dr. Smith,” she told him, giving him a tongue-touched grin and tucking a strand of blonde hair behind her ear.  Iris’s grip tightened on his arm.

“Brilliant,” he replied, giving her a nod.

He watched Iris as she took a seat next to him, licking her lips as her bright eyes darted to and fro around the bland office space, as if cataloguing every detail for future reference.  A smile bloomed from his chest to his lips.  

She turned her head, catching him staring.  “What?” she asked with a bemused twitch of her lips.

“Nothing.”

She swatted his arm. “You can’t just stare at me and then refuse to tell me why.”

“I wasn’t _staring_ at you.” He sniffed, straightening his back and glancing away briefly.

She raised her eyebrows. “And the Daleks just won the prize for the universe’s best childminders.”

“I wasn’t!  I was just…staring into space in your general direction.”

“With a big daft grin on your face?”

“I was just—”

“Dr. Smith?” the receptionist interrupted.  “If you’ll please follow me.”

“Right. Yes.” He popped up, placing his hands in his pockets and following her down the hall, Iris and Martha at his heels.

The receptionist ushered them into large, posh office, with windows overlooking the blue-grey waters of the Thames.  A stony-faced Indian woman with large glasses entered the room, taking a seat behind the mahogany desk, a petite blonde woman with a clipboard following her and standing just to her right.

“Dr. Smith, my name is Chandra Malik, and I’m the Vice President in charge of distribution here at British Tea.” She leaned across the desk to grasp the Doctor’s hand. Her grip was clammy.  “I hope our firms can establish a lasting partnership here today.”

The Doctor cleared his throat. “Yes, the TARDIS Corporation relies upon having a good tea supplier. Nothing like a good cuppa to keep the people happy I always say, don’t I, Iris?” He nudged Iris’s arm, leaning into her side.

She met his eyes, grinning and holding back a laugh. He leaned back, hand brushing against hers, a light spark of static electricity igniting at the contact.  A frisson of energy bolted down his spine, making his hearts beat faster.  Their eyes locked.  

The woman with the clipboard stepped forward, placing a hand lightly on Iris’s shoulder. “Mrs. Doctor, dear, why don’t I go give you a sampling of our selection while Ms. Malik and your husband talk business, hmm?” she asked.

The Doctor nearly fell out of his chair.

“She’s—she’s _not_ Mrs. Doctor!” he burst out, panic fluttering down his limbs.  

“No, just his business partner, I’m afraid.” Iris gave Malik’s assistant a wan smile. “But myself and my associate, Dr. Jones, would love to go pick out a selection for our firm, while Ms. Malik and the Doctor hammer out the financials.  Wouldn’t we, Martha?” She gave Martha a subtle twitch of her head towards the doorway.

Martha’s eyes widened. “Right. Yes. Choosing the right tea selection is very important to TARDIS Industries. Very good for ehm…morale!”

She popped up from her chair, following Iris out the door.

The Doctor leaned back in his chair, rubbing his eyes and letting out a breath before forcing himself to give his full attention to Ms. Malik.

***

Rose tapped her foot in irritation, as their escort poured each type of tea they offered into a long row of antique teacups, describing each blend in excruciating detail as she and Martha took fake sips, smiling and nodding intermittently.  At long last, their escort left her and Martha alone to make their final choices.

“What are we looking for, exactly?” Martha asked, setting down her cup and jumping to her feet.

Rose shrugged, following Martha towards the tearoom door. “I mostly make this up as I go along.  I just jumped at the chance to go investigate.”

Martha laughed.  “Makes you a good match for him, then.”

Rose made a disgruntled noise in the back of her throat, her earlier irritation at the Doctor’s actions returning in full force.

Martha tried the door handle, but it wouldn’t budge. “Damn.”

“Not a problem,” Rose replied, pulling the sonic screwdriver from her bag and pointing it at the lock.

“Wow, three weeks and he already trusts you with his sonic. Must have made quite the impression.”

Rose snorted, pride rankling. “This is mine.  Made it myself.”

Martha stared at her. “You _made_ your own sonic screwdriver?  Did he teach you, or…?”

“Nah, he thinks he’s _so_ special with his sonic and his special Time Lordy senses and all that, but it’s not so hard to do what he does.  A sonic’s just a transverse compression chamber with a super-precision polarization modulator.  All you need to build one’s the right parts.” She rolled her eyes, deciding at random to go through the door to the nearby stairwell and opening it with such force that it slammed against the wall.

Rose felt a hand on her shoulder. “Hey, are you alright?”

She sighed, rubbing her eyes.  “It’s just…before he—“ She cut herself off before she gave away too much, drawing in a steady breath and shaking her head. “He didn’t have to act so disgusted at the thought of being married to me.  It’s not like we weren’t pretending to be other people anyway.  He usually just goes along with people’s assumptions so as not to cause a fuss while we’re undercover, you know?  I just found it a bit insulting, is all.”

Rose pivoted to head down the steps again, but Martha halted her with a word. “Wait.”

Rose turned back to look at her, heart filling with hurt as her mind flitted to a time when the corners of the Doctor’s would twitch subtly upward with such assumptions.  

“He admires you, you know,” Martha told her, stopping on the stair above her.  “Quite a lot, by the sound of it.”

Rose looked away.  Yes, it was so _very difficult_ to gain the admiration of this Doctor, who openly loved people, or at least those not bent on murder or world domination.  She strode down the last few steps, sonicking the lock on the door before even trying the handle.  She heard Martha’s footsteps clanking behind her.

Inside the room was a large metal cube, slightly taller than Rose, sitting still under a spotlight.  The air was thick and humid, and Rose was overwhelmed by the scent of metal and vinegar. Her skin began to tingle and burn.

“What is that?” asked Martha, coughing and covering her nose, reaching to steady herself on Rose’s shoulder. Rose felt a charge of static ignite at the contact, and Martha snatched her hand back.  Rose moved to put her hand on her hip, but the movement of her clothes crackled with static, halting her.

A bolt of lightning struck out from the cube, and Martha jumped back, the ends of her hair going up in bright white flames.  

Rose yanked off her jacket and used it to bat at Martha’s head. “Get out,” she shouted. “Getoutgetoutgetoutgetout!”

They rushed out the door, slamming it shut behind them, but not before Rose saw a face taking form in the metal cube, large blue eyes blinking open.

***

The Doctor felt an uneasy prickling up his spine as he followed Ms. Malik into the factory control room, looking out on an array of conveyors and workers processing tea.  

“…you’ll see our dedication to bringing all British tea manufacturing under our umbrella allows us to integrate production and take advantage of economies of scale. And lower costs for us mean better prices for you.”

Malik at last stopped in her lecture for a brief breath, and the Doctor walked over to a panel of controls, surveying the various switches and levers.

“And I’m just supposed to presume that using your monopoly power to limit output won’t drive up the price of tea?” the Doctor asked, fiddling with a switch, and watching the little red light turn off and on and back off again.  

“Well…”  Malik froze, eyes going momentarily blank. “Oh dear.” She smiled, something manic flitting across her eyes.  “Your assistants are causing trouble, Doctor.”

He forced his hearts to maintain a steady rhythm and continued to examine the control panel. “Oh?  Probably just took a wrong turn. They both have an _awful_ sense of direction.  Never trust them with a map on a car trip, let me tell you.  One time we left for London and ended up in Cardiff.  Cardiff!  Can you imagine?”

Ms. Malik’s smile widened and her lips parted, showing every one of her very white teeth.  “Jig’s up, Doctor. You weren’t fooling anyone.  The Network has more than enough telepathic ability to identify psychic paper.”

“Oh well.  It was worth a shot.” He put his hands behind his back, leaning his head back.  “The Network….the Network…” The Doctor paced the room running his fingers through his hair. He ran his fingertips over the edge of a chair, feeling a charge of static.  Oh. OH.  He strode over to Ms. Malik, grabbing her hand and taking a long lick of her wrist.

He smacked his lips. “Yep! Silicon and chromium.  You’re a silimagnetoform!  Can take any form based on how you program your birth cells. Oh, you used to have empires!  Haven’t run into one of you in years!” He circled her with a broad grin.

Ms. Malik crossed her arms.  “The Time War took its toll, Time Lord. A group of us managed to escape with a primordium from one of our outer colonies before the Nightmare Child wiped our section of the universe from existence.  We landed on Earth a month ago.  It will be the perfect first colony in our remade empire—plenty of resources and good slave stock.  In return, we’ll civilise the brutes.  It’ll be a task, though.  Their minds are so primitive.  They don’t have even rudimentary telepathy! But that’s the burden of we more privileged races. Don’t you agree, Doctor?”

The Doctor clasped his hands behind his back, leaning forward. “Yeah, see, there’s where we’re going to have a problem.”

***

Martha was breathing hard by the time they reached the landing of the floor above and finished putting out the fire in her hair.

“What—the hell—was that?” she panted, grabbing Iris’s arm to steady herself, and flinching back when the contact shocked her.  “Ahh!”  She looked down at her shocked hand.

“And for that matter, what’s with all the static electricity?” Iris asked. “They must be charging the air.  But why?”

Martha looked up.  “Good question.”

Iris paced back and forth on the stair landing, twirling her sonic between her fingertips. “Think, Martha!  Why could they possibly need a charged environment?”

Martha watched Iris run her fingers through her hair and was struck by how she bore more than a passing resemblance to the Doctor in that moment.  She narrowed her eyes.  There was definitely much more to this woman than met the eye.  

“Martha?”

Martha shook her head, glancing away and scouring her mind, the mental image of old Dr. Kozlowski giving a lecture in her first year of medical school jogging an idea.  “Maybe it has to do with the conditions on their own planet? Like, we need oxygen and if gravity was too much it would crush us, yeah? So maybe they need an electric charge to keep them in homeostasis.  They must be controlling their environment to keep themselves healthy!”

Iris stared at her. “Martha, that’s—that’s brilliant!

She grinned, oddly proud under this woman’s admiring gaze.  “Well, I may not be _the_ Doctor, but I am _a_ doctor, and quite a good one at that.”

Iris beamed at her, something soft and a bit sad in her eyes. “Yes, you are, Martha Jones.” She looked away, clearing her throat.

“Did you see the face forming out of that metal block? Do you think that’s what’s controlling the whole operation?” Martha asked.

“Oh….Oh. OH. But that’s just it!”

“What?”

“Don’t you see, Martha? It’s how the aliens are reproducing themselves.”

“Oh! Like some sort of primordial substrate catalysed by the electricity?”

“Exactly! The electricity strikes that block and kickstarts cellular reproduction.  Then, bam!  New aliens. Ever run across the Sontarans?  They use a similar cloning process, except the base material is more of a pale liquid.”

“Of course!  But how does that help us?”

Instead of answering, Iris took Martha’s hand, leading them out a door and straight into two burly men in security uniforms.

“Well well well, aren’t we in trouble…”

***

“Yeah, you’re not going to _civilise_ the humans…” The Doctor faced his adversary with squared shoulders and narrowed eyes, his hands in his pockets.

“But we will!” Malik burst in, eyes alight. “The plan is working already. We can’t give them telepathy, as it would overwhelm their under-evolved circuits, but we _can_ give them common thought.”

The Doctor narrowed his eyes.  “What?! That’s—”

“Brilliant? Needlessly benevolent? Quite certainly. But it pains us to see them so deprived of something so fundamental.  We can hardly imagine what it must be like to have an idea, and not have hundreds of voices in your head assuring you of your brilliance.” She strode close to him, stroking his arm.  He stiffened.  “To experience something, and not be able to immediately share it.  To gain a wider variety of experience through the memories of your friends. To have constant assurance that there are others exactly like you in mind and spirit only a thought away.  It’s a closeness.  A shared sense of being.”  She pushed her body up against his side.

“We can’t offer this to the humans exactly, but by dosing them with the Namo and implanting ideas in their minds, we hope they gain some semblance of what it’s like to benefit from a mind web.  And if the Network stands to gain from it, all the better!  What matters is that we’re giving them _connection.”_  Her breath came out like a hiss as she brushed her fingers against his temple. He rushed to strengthen his psychic barriers, but not before he felt her mind graze ever so slightly against his.

He bristled. “Now _that_ was rude.”

She began to circle him, steps slow and measured, a grin tugging at the corners of her lips.

“But you fear it, don’t you, Doctor?” she continued. “The knowing.  The understanding. You fancy yourself so unknowable that you demand the universe address you by a pseudonym. It’s why your assistant makes you so nervous.”

“Yes, _let’s_ throw my surface thoughts back at me and pretend that makes you so very clever.” The Doctor rolled his eyes, striding over to look out over the factory room floor.

Malik chuckled. “Hit a nerve, I see. She is _very_ well-formed by humanoid standards.”

The Doctor crossed his arms, working to keep his face in a careful mask. “Who?”

“Your Irisss,” she replied, low and breathy. “But that was never the issue, was it?  Oh no, you’re well above being tempted by a bit of flesh. It’s that she fits you.  Understands you.” Malik brought her lips to his ear. “In here.” She tapped his temple with her forefinger. “Just a little too much like another blossom you plucked.”

The Doctor swallowed. “That’s enough.”

***

Martha opened her mouth to provide an excuse to the two burly, armed figures cornering them, but Iris beat her to it.

“Oh, sorry!” Iris told the guard towering over her.  “Got a bit lost on the way to the loo. You wouldn’t be able to point us in the right direction, would you?”

“You’re not fooling me, right, sweetheart,” he replied, cornering Iris with his steely gaze and grabbing her arm.

His partner seized Martha’s arm and twisted it behind her back, pushing her into a wall and trapping her. Her Taser dug into her side from its hidden pocket in her jacket and she rued the day that she finally gave in and conceded to carrying a weapon, though she still refused to use a gun.  Her mind flitted to the electric bolt hitting the metal block.  What if..?  She shook her head, putting that idea firmly from her mind.

“You’re coming with us.”

Iris looked up from where her captor’s hand gripped her right wrist, a curious look in her eyes as she studied the man’s face. “What’s your name?”

He looked down at her, and something softened in his features. He shook his head, closing his eyes, and when he opened them again, they seemed somehow more clear.  “No one’s ever asked me that before.” He cleared his throat.  “It’s Sam.”

“What planet are you from, Sam?”

He refused to look at her.  “This one, just like you.”

She shook her head.  “No, I don’t think so.  You might sound like an East London factory worker, but your skin doesn’t lie.” She glanced down at his hand, gripping her wrist.  “Not a callus.  You might be new to working with your hands, but I don’t think so.  You’ve not a blemish, not a freckle, not a hint that your skin has seen the light of day.” She tilted her chin upwards, looking him in the eyes. “Because you’re newly born, aren’t you?”

His lips twitched, and he glanced and his partner, who shrugged. “Well, you’ve already seen the primordium.  We program it to a specific template to determine what we look like, and out we pop.  Simple really. Just need a bolt of electricity to jumpstart the process.”

“Program?”

“We evolved from sentient computers, see.  If we don’t program the primordium before each birth cycle everything shifts to default, and we’re just identical square boxes.  Not the best form for this planet, in any case.”

“And what are your people doing on Earth, Sam?”

He swallowed, pursing his lips.  He looked away, and when he returned his gaze to them his focus seemed far away.  “We aim to make this the first planet in our new intergalactic empire. Use your people, extract your resources to make ourselves great again.”  He glanced down at her. “You done with your questions, missy? The boss don’t like that I told you so much.”

“The boss?”

“We’re all connected. Up here.” He tapped his temple. “It’s like, waddaya humans call it? Wifi!  That’s it. Wifi.”

“Right,” Iris sighed, glancing at Martha, still held captive by the second thug. She proffered Sam the wrist not already in his grasp.  “Lead on.”

***

The Doctor faced away from Malik, concentrating on keeping his emotional response in check when the door to the control room burst open.

“Oi, watch the hands, Mister.” Martha scowled at her captor as he pushed her into the room.

Iris was led in behind her, grinning when she saw him. With a glance from Malik, the guards released them and left the room.

“Hello!” Iris said, waggling her fingers.

“Long time no see,” he replied.  “Just been having a chat with Ms. Malik about her race’s plans to take over the Earth and civilise the human race.”

Iris gave a derisive snort. “Yeah, that’s not gonna happen.  I’ve already got the lowdown from Sam. Pretty ridiculous plan, if you ask me.”

The Doctor inclined his head. “No arguments here.”

“I should have expected the two of you to be _of one mind_.” Malik eyed him with a smirk. He swallowed.  “But I’m sorry to say that what you think really has no bearing on what happens next.”

The Doctor raised his eyebrows, putting his hands in his pockets and rocking back on his heels. “Is that so?”

She grinned broadly, showing all of her very white teeth.  “Oh, yes.  Because Phase Two is being implemented as we speak.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Phase Two?”

“We triple the dose in the tea, and start taking over other beverage companies. Go global.  Other nations may not be as fond of tea, but they do seem fond of Coca-Cola products.  Coffee.  Juice.  It’s really too bad that we can’t just dump Namo in the water supply. Taste’s too distinct.  We need more flavourful drinks to mask it.   But we’ve made inroads with all of the major global beverage companies thanks to a little power of suggestion.” She held up a teabag, twirling it between her fingers.  “Soon the entire planet will be acting solely under our influence.”

The Doctor’s legs strode towards her almost of their own volition, snatching the tea from her fingers and ripping open the bag, emptying its contents into the palm of her hand.  He touched the leaves with his finger and brought it to his tongue.

“Forty-seven parts per million. Just as I thought.  You triple that dose and the human race won’t last five years.  Their chemistry isn’t meant to handle a dose that high.  Not to mention anyone with a less than healthy heart will go into immediate cardiac arrest.”

Malik narrowed her eyes, looking away and pursing her lips.  After a moment, she met his eyes again and shrugged. “Small price to pay for the gift we’re giving them.  And there are so many of these humans that losing a few won’t detract from the Network achieving its goals. Plus, it’s all ready to go.  I press this button here and trucks depart bearing the new high-dose tea and the new formulations from our beverage partners to shops across Britain.”  She indicated a large red button on the control panel.

“I’m telling you, if you don’t stop this, this instant…”

“You’ll what?” she asked.  “Give me a stern talking to?”  She moved her finger, reaching out to press the button.

Out of the corner of his eye, the Doctor caught sight of Martha’s form lunging forward, Taser in hand, making contact with Malik’s chest.  Electricity crackled in thin violet lines across Malik’s skin, making her convulse violently.  Her features blurred, bleeding together like melting Crayola colours, before morphing into molten metal, which erupted in thousands of tiny bubbles, boiling over until she was nothing but a metallic puddle on the floor.

Outside the control room, pandemonium erupted.

***

Martha stood, breathless and shaking before what remained of Malik.  The silence inside the control room echoed in her ears, providing stark contrast to the angry forms of hundreds of the aliens rallying to attack, their screams of rage not penetrating the soundproofed room.  She had acted on impulse, and though she had suspected this outcome, it was another thing to see it acted before her.  She tried to focus on her UNIT training, trying in vain to find reassurance in the protocols of the organization to which she devoted her life.  It was not until her reeling mind landed on a long ago conversation with Harriet Jones and the maniacal grin of the Master as he tortured her family that she was able to steady herself.  They could not always rely on the Doctor to defend the Earth.  

She watched as the Doctor stood still and expressionless, staring down at the control panel, long fingers tracing the edges of the buttons and switches.  Time trickled slowly on.

His lips twitched downwards, Adam’s apple bobbing.  “Now I am become Time, the destroyer of worlds,” he muttered under his breath.  

Iris walked over to him, linking her fingers with his, and his posture relaxed, ever so slightly.  They stood silent a moment, surveying the very people they were about to destroy.

“Listening to Malik talk, they really seem to believe they’re doing the right thing,” he told Iris in a low voice, rubbing the back of his neck.  “It’s horrible, of course.  Their reasoning is all based on rhetoric and mob psychology. But from their perspective…” He glanced at the molten puddle on the floor, cutting himself off.  “Thing is, I can’t see another way in this.  The mind web means that every single one of them is going to be completely convinced their ideology is correct.  And the way Malik talked, she had affiliates everywhere.  So I can’t see a way to trap them, or—or sedate them, or—“ He sighed, running his hands over his face.

Iris rubbed light circles against his back, stroking his arm with her other hand. “C’mere.  I think I have an idea,” she said, voice soft.

She led him to the control panel, pointing to a section of switches. “Your plan is to just hypercharge the atmosphere and explode them to bits like Malik, yeah?  But these buttons here appear to control the reproduction process Martha and I saw downstairs. The ionic field they create initiates the cellular generation process.  But if we reverse the polarity and widen its range…”

“Oh. Oh! It should suck them all back into the primordium!  We can take them to a planet with the right conditions, and they can start again!  Iris, that’s brilliant!”

He swept her up in a hug, eyes closing and grin reaching ear to ear as he clutched her closer.  From her vantage point in the opposite corner of the room, Martha shifted from one foot to another and looked away, feeling suddenly the voyeur.  

After a long few seconds, she heard their bodies shifting, and she returned her attention to them.  They stood a mere foot apart, still in a relaxed embrace, with eyes only for each other.

Iris smiled, the gesture lighting up her face. “Maybe their society will evolve differently this time. Kinder, wiser, better.  Maybe not.  All we can do is give them a second chance.”

“Yes,” he breathed, tracing the apple of her cheek with his thumb. “A second chance.”

***

As the Doctor explained what had happened to Captain Magambo, Martha observed Iris supervising the loading of the Network’s primordium onto the TARDIS.  

“Oi!” Iris yelled at one red-bereted UNIT soldier who jostled the cube.  “That’s a living thing, that is.” She narrowed her eyes, stroking its side with her hand.

“Aren’t you worried about, you know, electric shock?” Martha asked, waving the singed ends of her hair.

“No,” said Iris, putting her hands on her hips. “Outside a charged environment it’s dormant.  Harmless.”  She stuck her head inside the TARDIS.  “Yes, it’s bigger on the inside.  Very exciting.  Now shift! It’s down the hall, second door on the left.  That thing can only survive outside properly charged conditions for so long.”

Martha smiled.  “You’re quite…forceful with them.”

Iris laughed. “Reckon I take after my mum. She had a way of getting what she wanted.” A shadow flickered across her eyes, and she looked away, pursing her lips.

Martha hesitated a moment before speaking.  “Look,” she said. “I know you’re hiding something.  I’m not even entirely convinced that you’re human.”

Iris’s eyes widened, and she opened her mouth to speak, but Martha held up her hand.

“I’m not done,” she continued. “The thing is, I don’t think it matters, whatever your secret is.  I saw you back there, with him.  You make him better.  And watching the two of you together…it wouldn’t surprise me if he brought out the best in you as well.  And that’s what’s important.”  Iris ducked her head, biting her lower lip and the corner of her mouth twitching upwards. “But—“ Iris’s head bobbed up again. “Secrets, they’re poisonous.  They can kill even the best of friendships.  You’ve a right to keep things to yourself, of course.  Goodness knows he does. Just, I feel like, you two, you could be, well, _unstoppable_ if you’d just be more open with each other.  Let yourselves lean on each other, so to speak.”

Martha placed a gentle hand on Iris’s shoulder, smiling as she met her eyes, which were shiny and bright.  Iris parted her lips, as though to speak, only to suck in a breath and close her eyes, nodding slowly.

“Right then,” said Martha.  “Reckon I better go save the Doctor from Captain Magambo’s interrogation.”  She gestured behind Iris, where she spied the Doctor, hands in his pockets and head leaning back as the Captain gave him a stern glare.

She strode over to the pair of them, cutting Captain Magambo off mid-sentence.

“Captain, you’re not going to get him to adhere to UNIT protocol anytime soon, so you’d best give it up.  I was there the whole time, so I can give you the full briefing later, alright?”

Captain Magambo sighed and nodded, acknowledging her defeat.  “We’ll speak later, Dr. Jones.”

“Yes, ma’am,” she replied, as the Captain headed over to an officer directing the clean-up crew.

“Thank you,” he told Martha, meeting her eyes briefly before fixating on a point just over her shoulder.

Martha nodded, following his eyes over to where Iris stood with Officer Bishara.

“She’s good for you, I think.  You’re better off with an assistant.”

 _“Assistant,”_ the Doctor scoffed. “I’ve come to despise that word.  It makes it sound as though you work for me.  Perhaps it was appropriate for some of the people whose job it was to help me when I worked for UNIT.  But you?  Her?  You’re better than that.  She’s so much better than that.”

“Right,” she replied with a little smile, patting his arm.  That settled that suspicion.  “Look out for her, then, Doctor.”  Her phone rang.

“Sorry, gotta take this,” she said, gesturing to her mobile and walking away a few paces.

“Martha Jones,” she answered.

“ _Martha, there’s been an explosion at Broadfell Prison.  We’d like you to come investigate…_ ”

***

Rose reached out and grabbed a roll of store brand chocolate digestives and placed them in the cart.  They were the kind her mum used to buy growing up, and even though they didn’t taste nearly as good with her new taste buds, she still found something sentimental and comforting about them.

The Doctor stared at her hand as she put the biscuits in the cart.  “Why are you buying those?”

“Well, I’m not gonna go months at a time without my favourite biscuits, and they don’t have Sainsbury’s in the fifty-first century or medieval France or whatever planet you’re planning on taking me to next, so I’m stocking up.”

He scratched the back of his neck. “You know I’m buying, right?  You don’t have to get the cheap ones.  These ones look good.”  He picked up a roll of McVitie’s.  “Or, oh! Custard Creams.  Gotta love those.”

“First of all, I don’t like paying with sonicked cash, which means I’m buying.  Secondly, I like these,” Rose replied, shaking her head.  He’d never been so odd about her choice of biscuits when she’d travelled with him before.  “But if you want those, we can buy them too.”

She moved the cart to the frozen foods aisle, frost biting her hands as she picked up six cartons of Chunky Monkey.

“Someone’s hungry.”

Rose chuckled. “Three of those are for you, you know.”

“Oh.”  His eyes brightened. “How’d you know my favourite flavour?”

She raised her eyebrows. “You’ve ordered banana-flavoured foods no less than thirteen times in the past three weeks, Doctor. Banana-flavoured ice cream’s pretty much a given.”

He made a happy noise in the back of his throat. “Well.” He smiled, ducking his head. “Y’know, I think we’re almost out of jam. I’m just gonna…” He walked backwards a few steps, gesturing at a display at the end of an aisle a few metres away.

“Take your time,” she replied, wheeling the trolley towards the cereal aisle, when she caught sight of an Ood blinking at her from behind a display of Crunchy Nut.  How… _ood_.

“Can I help you with something?” she asked the alien, biting her lip and looking around to see if he attracted the attention of any of the other shoppers.  A chill crept up her spine. The last time she had encountered one of his race its eyes had glowed red, possessed by a creature that may or may not have been Satan himself.

“He has ignored our summons.”

“Who?  The Doctor?  You’ve been summoning him?”

“He should not delay.”

Rose narrowed her eyes, glancing over her shoulder at the Doctor, who was wholly absorbed in comparing the ingredients list on the backs of two jars of jam.

When she looked forward once more, the Ood had vanished.

 

 


	7. Revisited

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to my fabulous beta veritascara

Rose sat on the jump seat, legs curled to the side as she paged through an issue of New Vogue.    After they had dropped off the silimagnetoform primordium on a planet with the right conditions for their species to grow and begin anew, the Doctor had put them into the vortex and immersed himself beneath the grating, insisting he had a terrible backlog of repairs.  So, after a long nap, Rose had settled herself in for a lazy day in the vortex.

Rose snuck glances at the Doctor tinkering beneath the console as she perused her magazine. She found herself cataloguing his movements, how when the TARDIS groaned he would frown and rub the back of his neck, and how he would touch his tongue to the roof of his mouth and grin whenever she let out a pleased hum.  It was in quiet moments like these that she had begun to notice how every so often his eyes would turn far away and he would swallow and take a breath, as if willing himself to carry on.

She had seen him like this before, when they first met, but after he had regenerated he had seemed much less burdened.  It made her wonder what had happened since she left to dampen his spirits in this way.

She wondered if it had something to do with the Ood’s mysterious message.  If they were summoning him and he was ignoring them, he must have his reasons.  The Doctor was no coward.  Yet, she had a sneaking suspicion that that there was much more to this story, which meant she would have to approach the matter delicately.

She was just examining a line of skirts meant to make one’s tail look its most attractive when the sound of irritated words voiced in Gallifreyan erupted from beneath the console.

She jumped down and crouched down next to the hole in the grating where the Doctor was enmeshed in wires, a headlamp falling over his eyes.

“Need some help down there?”

“No, I—“ There was a loud clanging noise followed by a staccato stream of Gallifreyan.  “Actually, could you hand me the gyric spectrometer? It’s the one with the spr—“

She interrupted him by dangling the instrument in question in front of his nose.

“Right. Yes.”  He grinned up at her briefly, scratching the back of his neck.

She sat down crossed-legged on the grating, peering down at his handiwork.

“Is that a chronal harmonizer of some sort?” she asked, pointing to a red sphere with rabbit ears.  “Why do you have it connected to the gravimetric anomalizer?  I mean, you might be able to end up in the right time if your materialization circuits are in good order, but good luck steering to the correct spacial coordinates.”

The Doctor’s eyes widened, staring up at her in surprise.  “I—” He glanced down at the machinery he’d been tinkering with and his face broke into a wide grin.  “That—that should solve the issue I’ve been having!  Now I just need to recalibrate the paradox inhibitor and we’ll be ready to go!  Hand me that Simian wrench, will you?”

She handed him the instrument, and they worked together for a long while, her handing him tools and asking him questions about the TARDIS’s inner workings, and he gladly expounding upon the uses of its various components.

"Where did you learn so much about temporal mechanics?" he asked her finally, glancing up briefly before returning his gaze to the gravimetric anomalizer. 

She remained silent, not sure what explanation she might give that wouldn't give away too much.  He let the silence hang for a minute before he spoke again.

"I learned at the Time Lord Academy," he said, tone casual.  "Terrible place, really.  I was never a very good student.  Always aching to just get out of there."

Rose looked up.  He almost never spoke of his life on Gallifrey.

"Wanted to see the universe?" she asked.

"That was a bit of it, yeah," he replied. "Though it was more that I wanted to run away."  He paused a moment to take a wrench to a heavy bolt securing a panel of switches underneath the console. 

“Run away?” Rose asked.  “From Gallifrey?”

He nodded, remaining silent for a moment.  When he opened his mouth again, words tumbled from his lips rapid-fire.  "When we were inducted into the Academy, we were taken to look into the Untempered Schism.  It's this enormous spacio-temporal fissure in the universe from which vortex energy leaks freely.  Its presence on Gallifrey is what gives all Gallifreyans a better time sense than any other species in the universe.  Before they are inducted into the Academy, children are taken to look into it, and those senses are heightened even further.  It’s also what gave them the ability to regenerate."

He glanced up at her.  “I saw that terrible power and wanted to run as far away as I could.  As I grew older, the urge only grew stronger.  I never agreed with the code of my people—that we were to watch the course of history, but were never to interfere.  I understood that I couldn’t interfere with fixed points, of course, but when there were people out there hurting, and I could use my life to  _help_ …” He shrugged.  “It became clear I didn’t belong among my people quite early on.  Gave me the logic to back up that urge to run, I suppose.”

He turned silent, returning to his tinkering. 

"And what are you running towards?" Rose asked him after a pause.

"What?" he asked, narrowing his eyes.

"Well, Gallifrey is gone now.  At some point you must have started running  _towards_  something, Doctor.  900 years is a long time to keep running on without aim."

His movements paused.  He tilted his head up, gazing at the TARDIS ceiling with his eyes far away.  She had almost given up on getting an answer from him when he cleared his throat, running his hand through his hair and gazing down at his trainers.

"Home," he replied at long last.  "I'm searching for a home."

"A home?" she asked.  “The TARDIS is your home.”

He shook his head.  “She’s an accomplice of sorts, an enabler.  We run away together, she and I.  Yes, she’s the constant in my life, a place to lay my head down at night. But I meant a home in more of the figurative sense.  As a place of belonging.” He paused a long moment, sighing and running his hand through his hair.  “As something that makes me  _want_  to stand still.  That makes me feel like I even  _can_ , without being consumed by...”  He shook his head, swallowing and looking away.

"But you must have come close at some point," Rose found herself insisting.  "All of the planets you've saved, time and again.  There must have been people who would have offered you a place among them."

"Offered, yes," he replied. "But it never felt right staying with any of them.  Because I never would have belonged in those places.  Not really."

"So you've never felt like you've belonged anywhere at all?"

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, remaining silent a long moment.  "There was a woman," he told her.  "We met just after the Time War.  She had this heart, this..." He sighed, rubbing his eyes. "She could have compassion for a Dalek, Rose could."

Rose's heart leaped into her throat.

"I've travelled with a lot of people over the years," he continued, "but she…she—" He cleared his throat, looking away. "She was my..." He paused a long moment before shaking his head and returning his attention to his work.  "Still, gone now."

Rose's heart raced, and she bit down on her bottom lip to stop its quivering.  She closed her eyes, breathing out in an attempt to calm her tumbling thoughts.

"There was a man," she blurted.  The story on the tip of her tongue felt like an excuse, an apology.  "This wonderful man.  He had this...time machine."

"Who taught you about temporal mechanics?" the Doctor clarified, glancing up and attempting to catch her eye.  She raised her gaze to the time rotor, letting its up and down motion and the subtle hum of the ship lull her into a state of calm.  She closed her eyes and breathed in, telling herself that it was just a story, the story of another woman from long ago.

"Not quite,” she replied at last, keeping her eyes closed.  The light clinking of the Doctor’s tools came to an abrupt halt.  “Though the story starts with him.  Oh, he taught me a bit here and there about time travel—fixed points, how it’s a bad idea to go back on your own timeline, that sort of thing.  But mostly he showed me that there was a better way of living your life.  That there was so much out there to see, so many people you could  _help_.

“But one day he just…” She shook her head, closing her eyes against the tears she felt welling up. She took a deep breath.  “One day he just disappeared.  Before my very eyes.  Never to return.” Her voice broke, and she wiped her eyes.  “God, I can’t even think about it without breaking down.  Just about killed me, it did.”

She looked at him then, reminding herself that he was right there in front of her, though in a sense the two of them remained so far away from one another.  He stared back at her with wide, bright eyes, a look of startled confusion on his face.  He shook his head, and when he looked up again, the deepest kind of understanding filled his eyes.  After a moment, he reached out and grasped her hand, tentatively at first, before turning it over and linking her fingers through his own.

“And you’ve been searching for him ever since?”

She sniffed.  “At first I was.  Devoted my life to building my own time travel device.  Was dead determined to find my way back to him.  But it’s a funny thing, time, isn’t it?  It changes things.  Destroys things.  Because there were things that happened to me while we were apart, things I’m not sure I could ever tell him about.” She paused.  “Things I…things I couldn’t bear for him to know about.  I’m not sure I can be the woman I used to be for him.”

The Doctor pulled himself up from beneath the grating to sit next to her.  “There are things…” He cleared his throat. “After I lost—” He rubbed the back of his neck.  “Things change.  People…they change.”  He sighed, leaning backward on his palms and joining her in watching the time rotor.  “One minute you’re a brooding survivor and the next you can’t get enough of life and the next you’re ready to fling yourself in front of an army of Daleks just to get the pain to end.

“It’s all a bit of a gamble, really, if people stay with you, even though you may become what feels like an entirely different person. If they’re willing to be with you through and through.  Sometimes it isn’t even about you.  Maybe you were only ever were just a lark to them.  Or maybe you help them be a better version of themselves, a version that doesn’t need you anymore.  Even if they say they want to stay permanently, you have to wonder if one day they’ll wake up and you won’t be enough anymore, that they want different things, things that you can’t give them.”

Rose turned her head abruptly.  The Doctor was gazing towards the TARDIS door like it held the key to his hearts’ desires. 

“You have so little faith in your companions?”  Her mind flitted back to the promise of forever she had given him so long ago now, a promise she found herself realising, that she might just yet keep, if not as the same woman as she was when she made it.

The Doctor’s smile was wistful as he took her hand and gazed down at their entwined fingers.  “I find that I have far more faith in you than one could possibly measure, Iris Fletcher.”  He looked away, ducking his head. 

She squeezed his hand, moving to lean her head on his shoulder.  It felt like forever that they sat like that, the silence between them suffusing a peaceful contentment.

At long last, the Doctor cleared his throat.  “How would you like to learn to fly the TARDIS?”

She smiled up at him, something sparking in her heart as she met his gaze.  “I’d love to.”

He made a happy noise in the back of his throat, jumping to his feet and offering her his hand.  She pulled herself up and let him lead her to a specific spot on the console.

“Now that button there is the helmic regulator.  Turn it thirty degrees, and then pull up.”

She did as he instructed and the time rotor started pumping up and down.

“That’s the ticket!” She met the Doctor’s grin across the console.  He pointed to a crank and a bicycle pump and she moved to stand next to them.

“Now turn this,” he gestured towards the crank, “seventeen times anticlockwise, while pumping  _this_  every other turn.”

She began to do as she was told, but on the seventeenth turn she slipped up and forgot to pump.  The TARDIS shook, and she grabbed at the console to steady herself.  She became aware of the Doctor’s hand grasping her waist, and shivered, raising her eyes to meet his over her shoulder.

“Steady there.” 

Rose stared into his eyes, bright with excitement and something else.  It hit her then, like a bullet to the heart.  He was looking at her in that moment like he did when she was Rose Tyler.

“Now, where do you want to go?” 

Her heart clenched and her head filled with a dizzy fog.  Could he feel for her now what he clearly had felt for Rose?  Could the two of them have a future together?  But how could they do that without him knowing who she once was?  And what would it do to him, to her, to  _them_  to let that information be known?

She cleared her throat.  “Doctor…”  She hesitated a moment, mind drowning in the implications of her epiphany.  She tried in vain to find something, anything, that she might say, but her thoughts had turned into a tumultuous sea of confusion and self-doubt.  Suddenly, her mind lighted upon a topic that might give her the distance she needed in that moment, and she breathed out, letting this diversion be her temporary life raft.

“Doctor, when we were at the market back on Earth, I had a chat with an Ood.”

The Doctor’s whole body went rigid. “Oh?” 

He began to pace about the console, fiddling with various buttons and levers, refusing to meet her eyes.

“Yes.  He said—or she said, I’ve never been sure how to tell Ood gender—” she sighed, walking over to the Doctor, who was staring determinedly at the monitor.  She placed a hand on his arm.  “It said that it’s been summoning you.  That you’ve been ignoring it.  Why would you do that, Doctor?  What if it’s in trouble?  What if—”

“Oh, don’t you worry about that, Iris Fletcher.  Nothing to be concerned about there.”  He began to race about the console in earnest then, and the ship shook back and forth as she transported them to a new location.  “Now, I know just the planet you’d love.  Weeeell…it’s really more of an asteroid…thing.  Anyways, forty-third century Firezia has the best leather goods in all of spacetime, and don’t think I don’t notice how you love that jacket you wear.  Just one moment and we’ll have you bartering with an old friend of mine.”

The TARDIS shook hard and Rose fell down onto the grating with a thud. 

“Here we are, then, Manova District, Firezia, 4447.”  The Doctor tugged on his coat and strode towards the door, not sparing her a second glance.  She pushed herself to her feet. 

“You’ll want to be careful not to offend their gods.  The Firezians are very religious in this period.  Devotion to handicraft is considered the utmost sign of piety, so it makes it the best period for shopping, but you should be careful not to  _ever_  show your elbows.  That’s absolutely scandalous behavior in these parts.  Had a companion a while back whose jumper caught fire—bit of trouble with this fire-breathing munchkin lady, long story—so she pulled it off to stamp out the flames and was arrested for public indecency!  Took me three days serving as her barrister in full jury trial to get her off.  Of course, it somewhat makes sense that Firezians are offended by elbows, considering they’re the most sensitive part of their anatomy…”

Rose sighed, following him out the door, and hoping that this time she could leave this planet with all of her clothing intact.

***

When the Doctor stepped outside the TARDIS, his foot sunk ankle-deep into fine pink sand.

“You all right?” came Iris’s voice from above him.

“Yes, fine, can you…?” He gestured towards the boardwalk just to his left, and she grasped his hand to pull him up onto it.

“There we are then,” he said, shaking sand off the hem of his coat before standing up straight to examine their surroundings.

They were on a tiny island surrounded by a pale orange sea.  The lone structure was a conical lighthouse, its tall blue form piercing the cloudy grey sky.  The spherical light adorning the top had the effect of making the structure look like an enormous party hat.  Well, he never did finish reattaching the gravimetric anomalizer properly, did he?  No wonder he landed them in the wrong place.  Who could blame him, though, with Iris telling that tale that cut so close to home?  It explained that pained, far off gaze she got sometimes, when she thought he wasn’t looking.  Quite the pair they made, didn’t they?  They ran hand-in-hand towards adventure whilst haunted by memories of their lost—

“Za!” shouted a little blue man waving his arms and almost tripping over his neon green platform boots.  “Za! Za!”

“Hello!” the Doctor greeted him, secretly glad that it appeared that he  _had_  landed on Firezia, if not in the region he had intended.  With Iris’s earlier comment about meeting Ood Sigma, he was quite grateful that his ship hadn’t taken it upon herself to bring him straight to the Oodsphere, meddlesome as she could be.

“Have you been vaccinated?” the man said, breathless, putting a hand to his chest.

“Sorry?  Vaccinated, did you say?  What for?”

The man’s eyes widened and he grabbed their hands, pulling them towards the lighthouse. 

“We better get you inside!  C’mon now!  Hurry! Hurry!”

The man rushed them inside the lighthouse into a warm, cheery kitchen.  There, a blue woman balanced a baby on her hip and stirred a large steaming kettle of grey sludge.

“Za,” she nodded to them as they entered.  “Who are you, then?”

“Oh, just travellers, passing through, “ the Doctor answered, striding about the small room, looking for anything noteworthy, stopping to finger the fabric of a pair of flowery curtains.

“Made those myself,” said the blue man smiling broadly and nodding towards the curtains.  “I’ve become quite good with a needle and thread.”  He gestured towards the woman.  “Molo insists that the only thing you’ll catch her sewing is skin.”

Molo’s lips twitched in the slightest hint of a smile, before her brew began to boil and her eyes narrowed again in concentration.  The Doctor took a seat at the kitchen table, eyes narrowing in concern when he noticed Iris standing uncomfortably in the corner, her gaze far away.  Could she be preparing to press him on…?

“Molo was a body mender back in Demia, see,” the man explained, eyes turning warm as he watched her work.  “And I was the sailor she brought back to life.”

Molo snorted.  “You got a little cut and passed out at the sight of your own blood.  It was hardly life-threatening, Tholo.”

“ _Any_ ways,” Tholo continued, “I got the gig minding the lighthouse out here and I convinced her to marry me and come along.”

“The things I do for love,” Molo deadpanned.  She walked over to Iris.  “Mind Rollo a moment, will you?  I’ve got to serve up the vaccination.”

Iris took hold of the infant, balancing it awkwardly in her arms and holding it slightly away from her body.  The baby gurgled, reaching out a hand to bat at her nose.  Iris swallowed, biting her lower lip. 

“You know, I’m a bit overheated,” Iris said, handing the child off to its father.  “I think I’ll just nip outside for some air.”  She rushed out of the room before anyone had time to comment.

The Doctor’s hearts twinged in discomfort, pushing aside worries that she might force him to confront the fate he’d been running from once and for all.

***

Rose breathed the sea air, closing her eyes and letting its faint spicy scent overwhelm her senses. She sat down in the sand, knees tucked under her chin as she watched waves the colour of orange sherbet lap the shore.

She had known deep down that what she currently had with the Doctor was unsustainable, that eventually she would be unable to dodge more detailed queries into her past.  She had told herself that should it come to that she would end it with him, rather than face the emotional fallout of revealing her identity and sharing the details of their time apart.   Yet, she had never considered that what they had might transcend the changes that time and regeneration had wrought.  Her breath quickened, and her head spun in panic. 

Suddenly, a splashing noise diverted her attention to her right.  There, a man with skin the same colour as the water emerged from the waves, pushing wet, green hair back from his forehead.  Rose’s gaze tracked downward to where water glistened on his fit form, naked all the way down to his webbed toes.

He grinned, then, a spectacular thing that lit up his face, and she found herself smiling back, even in her state of distress.  He walked over to her, taking a seat on the sand by her side.

“You are troubled.”   It wasn’t a question.

She nodded, returning her gaze to the waves and pacing her breaths in attempt to calm herself.  She watched them break upon the shore in an almost hypnotic rhythm, allowing calm to settle in her limbs once more.  It must have been fifteen minutes before the man spoke again, as if sensing the moment she was ready to speak.

“The water, it helps?” he asked.  He stared at her, unblinking, almost as if he was seeing  _through_  her.

Rose cleared her throat, nodding before looking away.  “I’ve always loved the seaside.  Ever since I was a young girl.  My mum was seeing this bloke for a while when I was eight or nine, yeah?  Owned this  _tiny_  chippy on the Penwith Peninsula.  Me and Mum would go down every weekend so she could see him, and I would just spend hours playing on the shore.  Making sand castles, doing cartwheels on the beach, chasing after the boys…daring them to kiss me.”

She flashed the handsome stranger a coy grin, before returning her gaze to the horizon. 

“But some days…some days I’d sit, just like this, eating chips and watching the waves.”  She closed her eyes and breathed in deeply.  “Smelled different back home, though. More like salt and sun cream and less like…” She sniffed, frowning.  “Indian food?  Yeah, Indian food.  That’s so weird.  Good weird, mind.  Gives me a mighty craving for some curry.” 

She glanced at the stranger beside her to find him staring at her still, clear orange eyes trained on her face.

“And what do you see, when you watch the waves?”  He blinked at her, face inscrutable.

She narrowed her eyes.  “Well, I don’t know…” She gave the man a casual shrug, returning her attention to the surf, eyes fixated on the long line of the horizon.  She shook her head.  “No, I do know.  It’s a smallness.  A sense that me and my petty problems…that maybe they don’t matter when the universe is so vast.”   A heavy feeling gathered in her chest, and she looked away, tucking a flyaway hair behind her ear.

“And you like this, this small feeling?”

She closed her eyes, nodding.  “It’s the same feeling I get traveling with the Doctor these days. Seeing so much of space and time.  Making a difference in the things that  _matter_.  Maybe that makes up for the damage I’ve done along the way, seeing as I’m so small and the multiverse so large.”

The man tilted his head, staring at her for a full ten seconds.  Rose looked away, squirming under his silent scrutiny.

“It sounds to me as if you are the opposite of small, Rose Tyler, no matter how the waves make you feel,” he said at long last.

She stiffened.  “I never told you that name.  Never told you any name.”

He blinked.  “But this is your name, yes?  The word most you most closely identify with your sense of self?”  He frowned.  “My Sense is still emerging, but that bit felt quite clear to me.”

Rose’s mouth opened and closed.  She bit her bottom lip, before glancing away.

“Might be.  Not sure I know anymore. Or if I even want it to be.”  She sighed.  “Life would sure be easier if I wasn’t.”

***

“So, what exactly do we need vaccinating for?” the Doctor asked his hosts, sniffing the warm sludge from the bowl Molo handed to him.

“To prevent you from broadcasting,” Tholo replied, bouncing his son on his knee.  He took the bright orange flower from his lapel and gave it to the little boy to play with.  The Doctor noticed Molo’s eyes turn bright and warm watching the pair of them from her place by the stove.

“Broadcasting?”

“Your emotions,” Tholo answered, enunciating his words and looking at the Doctor as if he was very slow.

“Am I doing that?” the Doctor asked, startled. 

“Well, it’s not as if we know when we’re doing it, do we?” Molo replied, pulling a syringe and a tourniquet from a drawer and moving to sit beside him.  “But the Maw can pick up on it, and that’s what matters.”

“The Maw?”

Molo and Tholo stared at him.  “Za,” said Tholo, “you get amnesia out at sea?”

“Sorry, I’m a bit…forgetful.  So what is this Maw exactly?”

The couple look at each other, before turning back to stare at him. 

“It’s a monster,” their voices echoed in unison.

***

“How could you stop being Rose Tyler?” the man asked her, puzzled.

Rose turned to him then.  There was something in this man’s face, an honesty and benevolence in his eyes that made her innately trust him.

“I sort of…changed form recently,” she replied, feeling relief in voicing the words she dared not speak to the Doctor.  “I feel like a different person, in this body.”

The man’s eyebrows drew together.  “A change of form is not a change of person.  To phase is a natural part of one’s existence.  But the many are still one.”

“To phase?”

“It is the nature of my species.  We phase—or change physical form, as you would say—whenever we experience a transition in life.  It can be a gradual change, like growing up, or sudden, like the death of a family member.  But it doesn’t change our essence.  Every Lanthana knows this.”

Rose shook her head.  “I’m not sure it works for me like it works for you.”

The man paused, before nodding quickly to himself.  “Let me bring you to the Mother.  Her Sense has helped many a young Lanthana experiencing his first phasing.”

He stood up, offering Rose his hand.  Perhaps it was the strong sense of trustworthiness she got from this man. Perhaps it was just a need to get away from this desperate, panicky feeling for a while. Whichever the case, Rose found herself taking the stranger’s hand and following him into the waves.


End file.
